TechCrunch |
- FCC proposes new rules to combat SIM swapping scams
- SquadPal is a social app to help remote working teams gel
- Twitter ban in Nigeria to be lifted if platform sets up a local office and pays taxes, president says
- SoftBank-backed Oyo files for $1.16 billion IPO
- And that’s that, as the Zoom deal to buy Five9 is called off
- Foxconn will build EVs for Lordstown Motors and Fisker at Ohio plant
- Tech giants brace for impact in India as new payments rule goes into effect
- What you should know about working with corporate venture investment committees
- Evil Geniuses CEO on the path toward esports ubiquity
- Daily Crunch: Facebook releases internal research on Instagram’s mental health effects
- NASA awards $253M to two companies developing electric propulsion tech for aircraft
- Vlad Novakovski and Nicole Quinn to elucidate Series A fundraising
- First drive of the Lucid Air reveals power and panache
- Cruise, Waymo get OK to launch robotaxi service in San Francisco
- Growth marketing is not a magic trick, says Ellen Jantsch of Tuff
- Who needs a BaaS partner, anyway?
- Aurora shines spotlight on autonomous truck tech, strategy ahead of SPAC merger
- TikTok starts flirting with NFTs
- Clubhouse adds clips, replays for asynchronous listening, better search and spatial audio for Android
- South Korean ISP SK Broadband counterclaims against Netflix for bandwidth usage fees
| FCC proposes new rules to combat SIM swapping scams Posted: 01 Oct 2021 04:24 AM PDT SIM swapping scams have been on the rise these past couple of years, and since most online services these days are tied to people’s phone numbers, the technique has the potential to ruin victims’ lives. Now, the Federal Communications Commission is seeking to create new rules that would help prevent SIM swapping scams and port-out fraud, both of which are techniques designed to hijack people’s phone numbers and identities. The commission said it has received numerous complaints from consumers “who have suffered significant distress, inconvenience and financial harm” as a result of both hijacking methods. SIM swapping is a technique wherein a bad actor convinces a wireless carrier to transfer a victim’s service to a phone they control. When a bad actor successfully transfers the victim’s service and number to another carrier, that’s called port-out fraud. To make it harder for scammers to gain control of potential victims’ phone numbers, the FCC wants to amend the Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) and Local Number Portability rules. In particular, it wants to require providers to adopt more secure methods in authenticating a person’s identity before agreeing to transfer their service to a new phone or to another carrier. The commission also proposes a rule that would require providers to notify customers whenever a SIM switch or a port-out request is made on their accounts. As part of the FCC’s rulemaking process, the public can now comment on these proposals. The commission still has to read those proposals and offer the public another chance to make their voice heard before it can decide whether to amend the aforementioned rules. Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Engadget.  |
| SquadPal is a social app to help remote working teams gel Posted: 01 Oct 2021 03:17 AM PDT The future of office work, post-COVID-19, is driving plenty of startup activity. Not just around core business needs like comms (Zoom, Slack et al) — but entrepreneurs are also competing to come up with the perfect tool to recreate the social serendipity of office life in order to make dispersed workers feel a bit more connected. This may actually be an impossible task. The chemistry of real life is a fickle wall-flower that’s hard to encapsulate in app-form (and a lot of office life was of course a total dirge). But that isn’t stopping people from trying. (The ‘Cambrian explosion’ of dating apps, over the past decade, also suggests that hope for meaningful human connection at the convenient tap of an app springs eternal.) To wit: Meet London-based SquadPal, a “social community” app that’s just raised a £400k pre-seed with a pitch offering a ‘chief happiness officer as a service’. Which does at least sounds a little bit different to all the ‘virtual watercooler’ apps that quickly mushroomed into view as offices shut their doors last year. SquadPal was also founded in 2020 (August) by Robinson Nouveau, Mehdi Benbrahim and Harshit Jain. Its trio of remote working co-founders have made a simple app for teams to silo some ‘fun’ social interactions — be it a quiz, a game or a baking or ‘who has the cutest baby’ competition — keeping that sort of non-work related yet team-building chatter out of more formal comms channels like Slack and Zoom. Or that’s the idea. The aim is also to entice workers by offering a dedicated social app for workplace teams vs more ad hoc platforms that could be used for the same sort of stuff, like Houseparty. In practice every company that’s already using a real-time messaging platform like Slack likely already has a ‘Watercooler’ channel for ‘office banter’ — but, hey, that doesn’t stop entrepreneurs dreaming. SquadPal’s founders say their app provides a place where teammates can learn more about each other and share personal moments. So of course it features a central feed which shows the latest “activities” from the team. Here’s Nouveau, SquadPal’s CEO: “We are a Chief Happiness Officer as a Service helping remote teams fight the feeling of isolation and disconnect from their teams. We do this through a fun social community app including competitions, challenges and games. Our mission is to recreate the social life of remote teams online because being physically apart shouldn't mean you can't be virtually together.” The team launched their app in February 2021, initially bootstrapping development. So far they’ve sign up 2,000 users from more than 500 companies. Since launching the app the startup says it has helped 72% of its active users to be “more engaged” at work. It also says 70% of users reported an improvement in their wellbeing at work. Most of SquadPal’s current users are fully remote workers but it says it also wants to target hybrid workers and global teams working from different locations — reckoning there will be some 450 million employees working at least two days per week remotely by 2025. Its roster of early investors include CapitalT VC plus angel investors such as serial angel Charlie Songhurst; PriceMatch co-founder Raphaël Theron; RLC Ventures Partner Jair Paula; Heroes co-founder Riccardo Bruni; Allplants co-founder Jonathan Petrides; Sonalytic co-founder and Spotify product director Martin Gould; and Foundrs & Heights co-founder Dan Murray-Serter. SquadPal says the pre-seed funds will be put towards integrating the app within teams' workplaces (Slack, Teams, Zoom etc) — so that it’s sitting in less of a silo. The startup also wants to add more curated activities and content for users to “find meaningful ways to connect while everyone is apart”.  |
| Posted: 01 Oct 2021 01:05 AM PDT Nigeria President Muhammadu Buhari announced on Friday that the ban on Twitter would be lifted, but only if the social media giant met certain conditions. The president disclosed this during his televised broadcast to Nigerians on the country’s 61st Independence Day anniversary. He acknowledged the fact that Twitter is used to disseminate information. Still, he warned about bad actors who misuse the platform to “organise, coordinate, and execute criminal activities, propagate fake news, and promote ethnic and religious sentiments.” Hence, the reason why his government decided to suspend the social media platform’s operations in the country on June 5. He said this has allowed the government to put measures in place to address these challenges. One way it claims to be doing so is by engaging with the Twitter team. In August, for instance, the nation’s information minister Lai Mohammed said Nigeria was in talks with Twitter to reinstate the company’s operations in the country. He said ten requests had been made but the government only reached an agreement with Twitter on seven — the other issues yet to be sorted out include Twitter setting up a local office, paying tax locally, and cooperating with the Nigerian government to regulate content and harmful tweets. It seems nothing has changed since then. The president expressed a similar stance today but in a more nuanced manner. According to him, the committee he set up, alongside the nation’s technical team, have engaged Twitter to discuss five issues — national security and cohesion, registration, physical presence and representation, fair taxation, dispute resolution, and local content. If Twitter agrees to meet these requirements posed by the government, the ban will be lifted. "Following the extensive engagements, the issues are being addressed and I have directed that the suspension be lifted but only if the conditions are met to allow our citizens to continue the use of the platform for business and positive engagements,” he said. In June, the Nigerian government suspended Twitter after the company deleted a controversial post from the president threatening to punish regional secessionists. Four months later, the country isn’t any closer to lifting the ban despite mounting pressure from the international community and several activists who have condemned the move, citing the government’s unnecessary attempt to stifle freedom of expression. While the Nigerian government has twice stated that it is working with Twitter to lift the ban, the social media platform has kept mum about said happenings.
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| SoftBank-backed Oyo files for $1.16 billion IPO Posted: 30 Sep 2021 10:38 PM PDT Oyo is ready to explore the public markets. The eight-year-old Indian budget hotel giant has filed the paperworks (PDF) with the local market regulator for an initial public offering, in which it is seeking to raise about $1.16 billion. The Gurgaon-headquartered startup — which offers an operating system of sorts to help hoteliers accept digital bookings, payments, determine the best pricing for a room, and integrates with third-party booking services — is seeking to raise about $942 million through sale of new shares, while the rest is set aside for sales of existing shares (secondary transaction). SoftBank plans to sells stake worth over $175 million, Oyo said in the filing. The startup plans to deploy over $330 million to repay its debt. Oyo recently raised $660 million in debt. The startup — which counts SoftBank, Airbnb, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital India, and Microsoft among its investors and was most recently valyed at $9.6 billion — has not offered a ton of other details about what it is looking for from the retail investors, but here's what we know: as we reported earlier this week, Oyo is seeking a valuation of over $12 billion in the IPO. And the startup's young founder — Ritesh Agarwal — doesn't plan to sell his shares in the public offering. The filing today marks a major turnaround for Oyo that grew too ambitiously in international markets in recent years but corrected course by hitting brakes on some of those efforts. Much like every other hospitality and travel firm, Oyo was also severely disrupted by the pandemic. At one point, the startup reported that its business was down by up to 60% as several nations enforced lockdowns as they scrambled to contain the spread of the virus. The startup made a loss of $528 million on a total income of $600 million in the financial year that ended in March this year. But it has been showing signs of fast recovery in recent months as some of its key markets opened up in recent quarters. The startup said in the filing today that four markets — India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Europe — account for about 90% of its overall revenue. Oyo has also streamlined its relationship with hotels in recent quarters. The startup today doesn’t own any hotel of its own and instead works with over 157,000 partners and helps them operate hotels, resorts, and homes. It doesn’t promise any minimum guarantees to those partners. The story of Oyo — in which currently SoftBank has over 45% ownership — starts with Agarwal, who left his rural town in search of a better education in Rajasthan. He often visited his friends in Delhi and stayed at their houses or rented cheap hotels. That's when Agarwal, then in his late teens and a recent college dropout, spotted a budget hotel that was struggling to fill its rooms each night. Agarwal then, he has said in the past conversations, convinced the hotelier to broker a deal to let him renovate the hotel and started marketing it to businesses in exchange for a cut of future commissions. That deal immediately proved to be a success, which then propelled Agarwal to explore broadening his offering — now using technology — to focus on what were the neglected segments of the market.  Oyo’s offerings That's the beginning of Oyo, which immediately found success and soon enough attracted the attention of a fellowship run by the foundation of PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. Oyo first assumed the market leading position and then started to expand — beginning with Southeast Asia, Europe, China, and the U.S., to name a few markets. Its aggressive expansion bet has had a mixed success rate. It's doing well in Europe and Southeast Asia, but making inroads in China and North America have proven to be more difficult than the startup likely assumed. At the height of that expansion, Agarwal, 27, invested $700 million into the startup. That year, he announced that he was planning to spend $2 billion through an entity called RA Hospitality Holdings to raise his stake in Oyo to 30%, from 10% prior to the $700 million investment. The filings show that now Ritesh and his other holdings companies own about 32 to 33% stake in Oyo. Oyo said in the filing that its app has been downloaded more than 100 million times and 70% of its workforce lives in India. As of December 2019, it said in the filing, the startup viewed its total addressable market opportunity as serving 54 million short-stay storefronts. “In India, Indonesia and Malaysia, OYO-powered hotel storefronts that joined the platform in 2018 and 2019 performed better than independent hotels of similar sizes in India, Indonesia and Malaysia respectively in 2019 on average. After 12 weeks of joining the OYO platform, OYO-powered hotel storefronts generated 1.5 to 1.9 times more revenue on average compared with the average revenue estimated at independent hotels of a similar size in India, Indonesia and Malaysia in 2019. In Europe, OYO-powered home storefronts earned an average of 2.4 times more revenue in 2019 compared with the average revenue estimated at an independently managed home in Europe in 2019,” it said in the filing. Two interesting slides from the filing that offer an insight into Oyo’s business: Average revenue of OYO-powered hotels and comparable independent hotels pre-COVID (US$ – 2019).
Catherine Shu contributed to this story.  |
| And that’s that, as the Zoom deal to buy Five9 is called off Posted: 30 Sep 2021 06:08 PM PDT Talk about a roller coaster ride. Zoom, the video conferencing company that became everyone’s primary means of communication around work during the pandemic, will no longer be acquiring Five9, a maker of cloud-based customer-service software. Though the all-stock deal, announced in July, was expected to enable Zoom to tap into the lucrative contact center market, a few major hiccups along the way seemingly led to today’s decision. First, Zoom’s shares, which moved in nearly a straight line toward the sky over the last couple of years, have more recently come under pressure, so the deal for Five9, which was valued at $14.7 billion in July, would have been considerably less today. (On the day that the deal was announced, Zoom’s shares were trading at around $360 each; they’re now trading at closer to $260 per share.) It certainly didn’t help matters when Zoom last week disclosed that a U.S. Justice Department-led panel has been investigating the tie-up over concerns that it might create national security risks given Zoom’s ties to China. Founder Eric Yuan is a naturalized American citizen who was born in China and moved to the U.S. as a 27-year-old in 1997. (Several years ago, we talked with Yuan about overcoming numerous hurdles to do this.) Zoom also said last year that it had mistakenly routed some meetings through servers in China and that it shut down the account of an activist who was using the platform to commemorate China's Tiananmen Square crackdown. Afterward, the company, which has said previously that a sizable part of its development team is in China (as is the case with many multinational companies), announced it would not permit requests from the Chinese government to impact anyone outside of mainland China. Still, the figurative nail the coffin might have been a recommendation two weeks ago by the proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Service that Five9 shareholders vote against the acquisition over concerns about Zoom’s slowing growth. That advice appears to have been heeded, with Five9 today issuing a news release that the merger plan had been "terminated by mutual agreement" between the two companies. Zoom separately released an announcement of its own, downplaying the entire episode. Titled “What’s next,” Yuan writes of Five9 that it “presented an attractive means to bring to our customers an integrated contact center offering. That said,” he adds, “it was in no way foundational to the success of our platform nor was it the only way for us to offer our customers a compelling contact center solution.” Either way, the development was expected evidently. As news emerged that the acquisition had been called off, the share prices of both Zoom and Five9 barely budged.  |
| Foxconn will build EVs for Lordstown Motors and Fisker at Ohio plant Posted: 30 Sep 2021 04:56 PM PDT Foxconn will build electric vehicles for Lordstown Motors as well as its other partner Fisker Inc. at a former GM factory in Ohio, under an agreement announced Thursday. Lordstown Motors, the beleaguered electric vehicle company that became publicly traded via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, said Thursday it reached a nonbinding agreement with Foxconn to sell its 6.2-million-square-foot factory. Lordstown purchased the factory in 2019 from General Motors. Under the agreement, which has yet to close, Foxconn will pay $230 million for the facility. The deal excludes certain assets such as Lordstown’s hub motor assembly line, battery module and packing line assets and certain intellectual property rights. Foxconn will also buy $50 million of Lordstown common stock. The companies said they will negotiate a contract manufacturing agreement for Foxconn to assemble Lordstown’s Endurance full-size pickup truck at the facility. Reaching a contract manufacturing agreement is a condition to closing the facility purchase. The parties have agreed to explore licensing arrangements for additional pickup truck programs. The deal comes at a critical moment for Lordstown Motors, a cash-strapped startup turned SPAC that had a string of missteps earlier this year. In August, the company hired Daniel A. Ninivaggi, a longtime automotive executive and former head of Carl C. Icahn's holding company, as CEO and a board member. The appointment came after months of tumult at the company, including the resignation of its founder and CEO Steve Burns. CFO Julio Rodriguez resigned following a disappointing first-quarter earnings report that revealed the company was consuming more capital than expected and unable to reach previously forecasted production numbers for its electric Endurance pickup truck. The goal of the partnership, the companies said in its announcement, is to present both Lordstown Motors and Foxconn with increased market opportunities in scalable electric vehicle production in North America. That includes Foxconn’s existing partnership with EV company Fisker Inc. (Lordstown and Fisker are separate companies and have no connection.) In May, Fisker signed an agreement with Foxconn to co-develop and manufacture a new electric vehicle under a program called Project PEAR. Production on the Project PEAR car, which stands for Personal Electric Automotive Revolution, will be sold under the Fisker brand name in North America, Europe, China and India. Pre-production is expected tp begin in the U.S. by the end of 2023 and will then ramp up into the following year, Fisker told TechCrunch in an an August interview. Fisker didn't reveal the U.S. manufacturing location. The final decision would be Foxconn's, Fisker noted at the time. Fisker issued a statement Thursday welcoming the news from Foxconn. “Achieving key program objectives such as time to market, access to a well-developed supplier ecosystem and overall cost targets were all important factors in the decision to locate manufacturing in Ohio,” Henrik Fisker said in an emailed statement. “Since signing the agreement with Foxconn earlier this year, we have been working together intensively on all aspects of Project PEAR including design, engineering, supply chain and manufacturing. Fisker’s commitment to volume manufacturing in the United States takes another important step forward today with the signing of this agreement.” Fisker also has another vehicle program in the works with a different contract manufacturer. The Fisker Ocean SUV will be assembled by automotive contract manufacturer Magna Steyr in Europe. The start of production is still on track to begin in November 2022, the company reiterated in its second-quarter earnings call. Deliveries will begin in Europe and the United States in late 2022, with a plan to reach production capacity of more than 5,000 vehicles per month during 2023. Deliveries to customers in China are also expected to begin in 2023.  |
| Tech giants brace for impact in India as new payments rule goes into effect Posted: 30 Sep 2021 04:16 PM PDT Apple, Sony, Google, Zoom, PayPal and several other tech companies as well as scores of banks have cautioned customers and partners in India to expect a surge in declined transactions as the world's second-largest internet market's central bank enforces a new directive for the way recurring payments are processed in the country. The Reserve Bank of India's directive, which goes into effect on Friday, requires banks, financial institutions and payment gateways to obtain additional approval for auto-renewables transactions worth over 5,000 Indian rupees ($67) from users by conducting notifications, e-mandates and Additional Factors of Authentication (AFA). The directive impacts all such transactions for debit cards as well as credit cards. The directive, which was first unveiled in 2019, was scheduled to go into effect in April this year but was extended to September 30 after banks and other players said they were not fully prepared to comply. India's central bank was not amused by the way the industry handled its directive, saying in March that "any further delay in ensuring complete adherence to the framework beyond the extended timeline will attract stringent supervisory action." The Reserve Bank of India said in the original circular in 2019, that the framework was designed to serve as "a risk mitigant and customer facilitation measure," adding that the issuer processing such transactions "shall send a pre-transaction notification to the customer, at least 24 hours prior to the actual charge by SMS or email, as per the customer's preferences." Several companies have reminded their customers and in some cases, other business partners, about the new directive. On Wednesday, Apple reminded developers that due to the new directive, "some transactions that don't meet these requirements will be declined by banks or card issuers." HDFC, the largest private bank in India, has posted the following message on its website: "Please note: Effective 1st Oct 2021, the Bank will NOT approve any Standing Instruction (e-Mandate for processing of recurring payments) given at Merchant Website / App, on HDFC Bank Credit card/Debit Card, unless it is as per RBI compliant process." Several banks, including HDFC, Axis and Kotak have said this week that they will be complying with the new rule. In May this year, Google stopped on-boarding new recurring payment customers on its Play Store. The company told developers that free trials and introductory pricing should be removed from the apps until “the ecosystem challenges are addressed.” YouTube has moved to support only a prepaid — pay as you go — payments acceptance model for its Premium service. In the same month, Amazon said it was “temporarily” discontinuing new member sign-ups for Amazon Prime free trial until further notice. There hasn’t been any change to that notice since.
The directive doesn’t impact recurring payments made through UPI, a payments infrastructure built by a coalition of retail banks. Which explains why some firms — including Netflix — have added support for auto-pay on UPI in the country. But its impact is likely to be far-reaching. A fintech founder told TechCrunch that the payments provider they use to advertise on Facebook and Google had informed them that their automatic-payments won’t be processed starting later this week, citing the central bank’s rule. The founder requested anonymity to discuss what he deemed to be sensitive. The new rule is the latest in a series of guidelines the Indian central bank has proposed or enforced in recent years. As Pratik Bhakta outlines in a post on The CapTable, the moves illustrate that though the regulator has encouraged the proliferation of fintech startups that are innovating for users, the RBI is closely watching whether any trend is attempting to hurt those consumers. "Until legislation catches up, regulation has to adapt to ensure that the financial system absorbs digital innovation in a non-disruptive manner," said RBI Deputy Governor T Rabi Sankar at a conference earlier this week. "We would only be able to reach a thriving and mature payments system if, over time, all stakeholders attach due importance to long-term improvements over short-term gains and internalise mature practices like informed consent and transparency of data usage." In emails to PlayStation Plus subscribers on Thursday, Sony said, "From 30 September 2021, you may see your credit and/or debit card payments for PlayStation Plus fail when trying to pay for a subscription on PlayStation Store." "This applies to both new subscription purchases and payment of recurring subscription fees. This means that any future PlayStation Plus subscription fees set up to be charged automatically may fail. If that happens, your PlayStation Plus subscription will come to an end."  |
| What you should know about working with corporate venture investment committees Posted: 30 Sep 2021 04:04 PM PDT With global corporate-venture-capital-backed (CVC) funding reaching $79 billion across 2,099 deals in the first half of 2021, according to CB Insights, the chances are high that startups will find great opportunities with this growing investor set. Entrepreneurs, however, are likely to discover that the investment process can be different for CVCs compared to private venture capital firms. While both types of investment firms tend to make decisions via an investment committee (IC), private VCs (inclusive of VCs with corporate backers that have an independent LPA structure) make up their ICs with firm partners and/or other venture-minded people.
As CVCs become more active, entrepreneurs often don't understand that the decision to invest, or not, doesn't rest solely within a subgroup of the direct investment team or with venture-minded people. But for CVCs investing off a corporate balance sheet, the IC can include corporate-minded people, such as the CEO or business unit leaders, who generally tend to be detached from the venture mindset and the requirements for operating in the VC world. As such, entrepreneurs will realize that a successful CVC investment decision tends to have different requirements compared to a private VC firm’s decision. So what do entrepreneurs seeking investment need to know about this relatively new but powerful participant in the funding process? I'll do my best to demystify the role of the CVC IC and shine a light on how entrepreneurs can navigate some of the hidden pitfalls while taking advantage of the opportunities. The arbiters of investmentWhile private VCs immerse themselves into the venture ecosystem, CVCs live in the middle of two very different worlds and mindsets: corporate and venture. The CVC must engage the venture ecosystem to attract deal flow while also driving opportunities that can be of strategic interest to the corporation. To do this well, a CVC ideally should have a well-defined mandate and IC purpose statement — to deem investment opportunities as strategic, for example. A business unit leader or CEO who spends about an hour on a monthly IC session is nearly completely immersed within the corporate mindset while making a decision related to the venture world.  |
| Evil Geniuses CEO on the path toward esports ubiquity Posted: 30 Sep 2021 04:02 PM PDT The pandemic brought a new class of gamers online for the very first time, and the gaming space has never been larger or more diverse. At the same time, while esports saw some viewership gains in the past year, it still had to deal with plenty of hurdles tied to pandemic restrictions on physical events. At TechCrunch Disrupt, we recently sat down with Evil Geniuses CEO Nicole LaPointe Jameson who helms one of the oldest esports leagues around as one of the youngest CEOs in her class. We chatted about the challenges facing the esports industry to keep pace with a rapidly diversifying audience and the opportunities for building a league that can adjust to those shifts faster than others. Evil Geniuses (EG) was founded in 1999 and has had a winding journey since. LaPointe Jameson got involved when the Chicago-based firm she worked for, Peak6 Investments, took over EG as part of an Amazon divestment following its acquisition of Twitch, which had previously owned Evil Geniuses. The capital injection came at a time when esports leagues were finally catching the attention of institutional investors who saw big opportunity in the space. Years later, that potential is still there, but the path toward mainstream embrace has been more circuitous than many had hoped. Hard viewership numbers are hard to come by but signal a subindustry that’s growing more slowly than the overall industry it sits inside. Still, LaPointe Jameson believes the industry has plenty of room left for rising players to innovate and create new opportunities for the whole industry.  |
| Daily Crunch: Facebook releases internal research on Instagram’s mental health effects Posted: 30 Sep 2021 03:10 PM PDT To get a roundup of TechCrunch's biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for September 30, 2021. It's the last day of the third quarter! Yes, that means earnings season is coming, along with a whole bunch of venture capital data — more on that in a moment — but more importantly, how the heck is it Q4? Already? From the TechCrunch side of things, cheap tickets to our Sessions: SaaS event are going away in short order. So, snap 'em up if you are coming. I'm hosting and even doing a panel or two. See you there! – Alex The TechCrunch Top 3
Startups/VCBefore we start, TechCrunch's Brian Heater gets 47 points for this headline. As promised above, let's start our startup work with two stories from India:
Next up, venture capital news:
And, finally, a venture round rundown:
Scaling across Series A to CIt’s hard to find actionable, proven advice for scaling startups. That's because only 7% of the startups that raise seed rounds are able to grow their companies enough to land a Series C investment, according to a Dealroom study. To create a framework for founders who are charting a path from $1 million to $25 million in annual revenue, Arthur Nobel, a principal at Knight Capital, conducted 47 interviews with founders and investors who’ve taken startups from Series A to C. More than an overview, the article offers approaches for navigating the challenges of T2D3 (triple, triple, double, double, double) growth, specific hiring recommendations and other strategic insights. As a bonus, the post also includes steps and visualizations you can use to create your own scaling roadmap. “The takeaway is to initially figure out in which stage your company and departments are in and only do what is required for that stage,” writes Nobel. (TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.) Big Tech Inc.
TechCrunch Experts: Growth Marketing Image Credits: SEAN GLADWELL (opens in a new window) / Getty Images TechCrunch wants to help startups find the right expert for their needs. To do this, we're building a shortlist of the top growth marketers. We've received great recommendations for growth marketers in the startup industry since we launched our survey. We're excited to read more responses as they come in! Fill out the survey here.  |
| NASA awards $253M to two companies developing electric propulsion tech for aircraft Posted: 30 Sep 2021 03:08 PM PDT NASA has chosen two U.S. companies to develop electric propulsion technologies for aircraft, with the aim of introducing this tech to U.S. aviation fleets by 2035. The two companies, GE Aviation and MagniX, will conduct their work over the next five years. That includes ground and flight test demonstrations, as well as collaborations with other NASA projects focused on electric propulsion, data analysis and flight test instrumentation. The awards, granted under the agency's Electric Powertrain Flight Demonstration (EPFD) program, have a combined value of $253.4 million. Of that, $179 million was awarded to GE Aviation, with MagniX receiving $74.3 million. "GE Aviation and MagniX will perform integrated megawatt-class powertrain system ground and flight demonstrations to validate their concepts, and project benefits for future [electrified aircraft propulsion] aircraft configurations," NASA's Gaudy Bezos-O'Connor, EPFD project manager explained in a statement. "These demonstrations will identify and retire technical barriers and integration risks. It will also help inform the development of standards and regulations for future EAP systems." The EPFD project is part of a larger NASA program called Integrated Aviation Systems, which conducts research and development to turn next-gen tech into real-world operational flight systems. There are many companies working on electric flight propulsion systems, but these are generally found in emerging air taxi markets, where the flights are shorter and the weight of batteries is mitigated by the overall small size of the aircraft. As TechCrunch's Devin Coldewey explains, needing to generate lift and the weight of batteries have been the "fundamental conundrum" that has held back electric planes. Perhaps these public-private partnerships will finally crack the puzzle. The NASA project aims to develop tech for short-range and regional air travel, as well as narrow-body, single-aisle aircraft.  |
| Vlad Novakovski and Nicole Quinn to elucidate Series A fundraising Posted: 30 Sep 2021 02:40 PM PDT Vlad Novakovski co-founded Lunchclub in 2017 as a way to improve professional networking. In 2020, the company made a large push toward videos (thanks, COVID) and eventually saw enough traction to raise a $24.2 million Series A at a valuation above $100 million. Nicole Quinn from Lightspeed Ventures lead the raise. We're thrilled to have both on TechCrunch Live to help explain how to raise a Series A financing round. They're sticking around the show to give feedback on pitch decks presented by selected startups. TechCrunch Live also features the TCL Pitch-off, which gives folks in the audience the chance to raise their hand and pitch their startup to our guests, who will give their live feedback. Nicole Quinn is a leader in venture capital and her portfolio is impressive, with such investments as Cameo, Zola, Goop, Calm, Haus Laboratories and others. Vlad Novakovski co-founded Lunchclub in 2017 with Scott Wu and Hayley Leibson. In 2019 the company raised a $4 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz with other investments coming in from Quora's co-founder, the Robinhood co-founders and Flexport's co-founders. When the pandemic hit in early 2020, the company quickly turned focus to connecting professionals virtually. Who reached out to whom? What did it take for Quinn to write the check to Novakovski and team? How do they work together now? Join us on TechCrunch Live on Wednesday, October 6, at 12p PT / 3p ET to find out! TechCrunch Live is 100% free to folks who attend live, but only TechCrunch+ members can access the content on-demand. If you're not yet an TechCrunch+ member, sign up here.  |
| First drive of the Lucid Air reveals power and panache Posted: 30 Sep 2021 02:19 PM PDT While cruising along Interstate 8 in the Lucid Air, it didn’t take long for the conversation to turn to spider graphs. Spider graphs offer a quick glimpse of how various factors like power, performance, weight and aerodynamics interact with one another. For the engineer sitting in the passenger seat, spider graphs are top of mind. Balancing the weight of battery packs with power and braking is a delicate science that when tipped too far in any one direction causes total chaos for the consumer. Add in design constraints as well as federal and legal guidelines and the bar to creating a successful brand-new vehicle from scratch seems to be an almost impossible task. The Lucid Air, a luxury electric vehicle that ranges between $77,400 and $169,000 depending on the variant, has some well-honed spider graphs. While the Air hasn’t completely knocked it out of the park on the first go, thanks to a team of automotive veterans, advanced technology and that spider graph sweet spot, the new Lucid Air offers a blend of tremendous range, luxurious fit and finish, and enough technology to keep even the most discerning customers happy. The drive: Rocket ship with a view Image Credits: Kirsten Korosec While waiting in line for a 13-minute stint behind the wheel of one of a dozen Lucid Air Dream R vehicles fresh off the production line, I’m handed a planogram pamphlet, with the words “Lucid Quick Starter” emblazoned across the front. Think of it like a supermarket map that helps you figure out where the windshield wipers are and how to adjust the steering wheel. Customers and journalists alike mill ahead after completing a nearly three-hour tour through the battery and assembly plant in Casa Grande, Arizona, and it’s clear that what we’re about to test drive needs a little bit of demystifying. The Lucid Air Dream R cars we’re driving and riding in are full-size sedans with five seats and interior space that rivals some midsize SUVs. Dream is the name Lucid has bestowed on the first editions of the Air that they are rolling off the line. The Air is the first production vehicle that Lucid Motors has created and it comes in two versions, Range (R) and Performance (or P). The main difference between the two is obvious by their names: Range gives you up to 520 EPA-estimated miles, while Performance gives you 1,111 horsepower and can do naught to 60 in under 2.5 seconds. There are almost no physical buttons in the cabin outside of those used for some basic temperature and fan controls for the driver and passenger and audio controls, plus a few small buttons on the steering wheel to control things like the ADAS system. Everything else is set using the main screen in the center console — a screen Lucid has dubbed the “Pilot Panel.” It’s a large curved screen that can be stowed into the dash to reveal a small storage cubby, and it serves as the central control system for the Lucid Air.  Image Credits: Kirsten Korosec Climb in and set your seat settings the way you do in any other luxury car using toggles on the seat, but that’s where the comparison to other gasoline-powered vehicles ends. Want to change where the steering wheel is? Like a Tesla, there’s no button, joystick or lever on the column. You’ll need to do that on the Pilot Panel. How about adjusting the mirrors? Another few swipes and taps on the center screen and you’re there. Once situated, use the stalk on the right side of the steering wheel to move into drive and if you have brake hold on, you’ll need to give the accelerator a small nudge to get the 5,600-pound car rolling forward. The turning radius is relatively big since this is a full-size luxury sedan so it’s safe to expect to see plenty of owners practicing the art of three-point turns in tight parking lots. The accelerator isn’t touchy in the comfort mode, which Lucid calls Smooth. In fact, it’s well balanced and feelsome, a lot like any ICE-engined vehicle out there today. Acceleration is linear, so you won’t suddenly find yourself launching to blistering speeds without consciously putting your foot in it. On sun-scorched, cracked and uneven roads the Air R rides smoothly and comfortably — maybe even a little numb in the Smooth mode. If you want to feel a bit more connected, put the car into Swift mode using the Pilot panel, and the five-link suspension and semi-active dampers change, as does the throttle map and steering ratio. The ride stiffens ever so slightly, though you don’t have to worry about jostling your passengers. This is no sports car, but it’s no longer pillowy soft. Esther Unti, the senior vehicle dynamics engineer who is shepherding one of the two 13-minute drives we did said that if you drive the car in Swift or the even more sporty Sprint mode, which we weren’t permitted to try, you do (for obvious reasons) lose around 10 miles of total range. There are two regenerative brake modes you can use in the Lucid Air: standard and high. Hold down the Swift mode button on the Pilot panel and you can bring up the settings for braking. In high mode, the Air drives like any electric vehicle in B-mode or braking mode. Take your foot off the accelerator and the car slows and sends a little bit of power back into the 113 kWh battery pack. (That pack is bigger than anything coming out of Tesla, by the way.) Like most braking modes, it takes a bit of getting used to, to modulate and not jostle your occupants, but it’s not tuned to be overly aggressive. In standard mode, the Lucid Air coasts the same way a heavy gasoline-powered vehicle does. In front of the driver is a massive yet somehow not overwhelming 34-inch curved 5K screen that serves as the cockpit. It is surprisingly minimalist with its information. Use the buttons on the steering wheel to set the ADAS system, which Lucid calls “DreamDrive,” and the adaptive cruise system deploys its 14 cameras, six radar sensors, one lidar and one ultrasonic sensor. From what I could tell in the three-minute highway stint I did with it on, the ADAS system seems to be relatively well sorted. You can choose Highway drive — which uses lane-keeping assistance to keep you relatively centered in the lane, though the vehicle did ping-pong a little off the lines in wider lanes — or standard cruise control, which turns off the lane-keeping assistant and manages speed only. While we weren’t able to try any of the navigation systems because they were disabled, Lucid says that you can put a destination in on the upper cockpit screen to the right of the steering wheel and then swipe the map down into the Pilot panel to display a large map. The interior: All that spaceThe Lucid Air is designed around space, and inside, there’s plenty. There’s more than enough legroom in the back seat (more than 35-inches in the R version I rode in), and the giant dual-pane infrared-blocking glass roof makes it feel very lounge-like from the back seat. It’s like being in a convertible without having to worry about sunburn, ruining your new ‘do or losing your hat. All that glass does make the interior of the car a bit boomy even on relatively smooth stretches of road. Boomy enough that on two separate 13-minute loops, I had to lean forward to hear the conversation happening in the front seat.  Image Credits: Kirsten Korosec The interior is a balance of modern and minimalist. Muted colors and cloth and leather materials encourage the same airy and open feel, yet there are a few things inside the Air that feel a little bit less than premium. For one: The interior door handles. Lucid has rethought the typical pull and placed it inside the armrest as a small plastic-feeling lever that you easily pull toward the rear of the car to open. In both models it felt light and somewhat rough against my fingertips — almost like a 3D-printed part that was an afterthought. It’s the same with the steering wheel controls for the ADAS system. To control the system you use a pair of silver buttons directly on the spokes of the wheel. Press once for highway mode or hold for cruise control only. A small thumb wheel under the button you use to engage cruise allows you to speed up or down when using the cruise control or ADAS. That wheel lacks a notchy heft that you’d expect from a luxury car and it too feels like a light, 3D-printed part. All in all, these are tiny things that don’t detract from the overall luxurious and solid fit and finish of the Lucid Air. Body panels are tight and flush, with even gaps all around, and there’s a clear sense of what Lucid thinks is going to be the future of the luxury sedan. The Air starts at $77,400 ($69,900 after federal tax credits but before the destination fee) for the base model and can go as high as $169,000 ($161,500 after tax credits) for the Air Dream Edition that I drove. According to Lucid’s site, the Air Dream Edition is currently sold out and reservations are closed. Customer deliveries start in early October.  |
| Cruise, Waymo get OK to launch robotaxi service in San Francisco Posted: 30 Sep 2021 01:47 PM PDT The California Department of Motor Vehicles gave General Motors-backed Cruise and Alphabet-owned Waymo the green light to start charging for autonomous services offered to the public. On Thursday, Cruise received a “driverless deployment permit,” which means it can receive compensation for services provided without a safety operator in the front seat. Waymo’s “drivered deployment permit” allows the operator to also charge money while operating an AV, but with a driver in the front seat. While they can both in theory charge now for autonomous delivery services, they are still a step away from being able to charge for robotaxi services. That last hurdle will require a permit from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), but both Waymo and Cruise declined to comment on a potential timeline for launching a commercial ride-hailing service in SF. They won’t be the only ones making a business out of their AVs on the roads in California. In December, 2020, autonomous delivery startup Nuro became the first company to receive a permit from the California DMV to launch a commercial driverless service on public roads in the state. Cruise and Waymo have been testing their AVs on public roads with a safety driver since 2015 and 2014, respectively, and without since October 2020 and October 2018. Cruise was also given permission to start giving passengers driverless rides in California in June, so the company has been offering its employees free rides for the past few months. In August, Waymo began its Trusted Tester program in the city, as well, allowing San Franciscans to hail one of its autonomous, electric Jaguar I-Pace vehicles, with a safety driver on board, for free rides. Cruise’s most recent authorization grants the company permission to use its fleet of autonomous Chevy Bolt-based vehicles for commercial services on public surface streets within certain parts of San Francisco between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. at a maximum speed of 30 miles per hour. Waymo can use its fleet of light-duty AVs within parts of SF and San Mateo counties on public roads with a speed limit of up to 65 miles per hour and with no apparent time restrictions. Both can operate in rain and light fog. Both Cruise and Waymo declined to comment on when they plan to launch a commercial service in the Bay Area or whether they have plans to begin a delivery service. Last November, Cruise and Walmart partnered in Scottsdale, Arizona to deliver goods with a safety operator in the front seat. Waymo Via’s local delivery business has also been operational in Phoenix, Arizona since January 2020, also with a trained operator onboard, providing services for clients like UPS and AutoNation.  |
| Growth marketing is not a magic trick, says Ellen Jantsch of Tuff Posted: 30 Sep 2021 01:33 PM PDT If you are looking for a growth marketing playbook, stop reading now, because you won’t get one from Tuff. The agency’s founder Ellen Jantsch makes it clear: There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to growth. The team at Tuff knows their stuff — and it’s precisely why they are not selling “magic” or any kind of “mysterious secret sauce.” Instead, they are betting on transparency and experimentation, and it seems to be working well: The agency was warmly recommended to TechCrunch multiple times via our growth marketing survey. (You can share your own recommendations here!) For instance, Luke Oehlerking, VP of Product and Strategy at solar company Zenernet, explained that Tuff fitted the bill for its ability to “truly move the needle with measurable results” while acting as “an extension of [Zenernet’s] own team.” This doesn’t necessarily involve offline meetings: Oehlerking and Jantsch are both based in Colorado, but Tuff’s team is fully remote, with global clients. Client work aside, Tuff also launched Growth Guide, a remote growth marketing training program for founders. We asked Jantsch about all that, and found our conversation an interesting complement to our interview with LA-based agency MuteSix: Both share a focus on results and creativity, but Tuff is focused on a wider range of sectors than DTC, while also being smaller. Let’s find out how it works. Editor’s note: The interview below has been edited for length and clarity. What is Tuff? Why did you launch it, and how big is it now? Ellen Jantsch: Tuff is a small (20-person) growth marketing agency that partners closely with startups and scaleups to help them increase revenue and sales. While we have found success working with teams in nearly every industry, from early traction startups to large enterprises, there's certainly a type that fits us best. The most basic guidelines: If a prospect is looking to acquire new customers and scale their company through modern channels, tools and frameworks, we're almost always in. I started Tuff as a one-woman show because I wanted to do meaningful work with companies (and founders) I liked. While growth was always in the cards, I've always been most focused on creating a great place to work with people that care about helping companies with unique ideas as much as I do. After nearly five years in business, I'm proud to say that I've been able to check quite a few of those boxes I created for myself in the very beginning and added a handful of others along the way. What range of services do you provide? Our bread and butter is building efficient, holistic, growth-focused marketing strategies. We do this with our method that's been battle-tested and has proven itself no matter the industry or company life stage. Then, we stay hungry for research and execute to a T, consistently optimizing and refining to find maximum efficiencies. Throughout it all, we lean on all members of our team. Egoless and curious, we share hypotheses and findings with our partners and each other to find more streamlined paths to growth. But what really sets us apart is our method. Radical transparency is the name of the game. We believe that collaboration and showing our work is the only real way to build foundations for trustworthy partnerships. Our list of tactics includes but is most certainly not limited to PPC, social ads, technical SEO, content strategy, creative, email and conversion rate optimization (CRO). Are your team members generalists and/or specialists? We hire for two core roles at Tuff. We have growth marketers who are big-picture strategists, as well as channel experts who are deeply experienced in a particular type of marketing. Each account we work with is paired with a growth marketer and at least three to five different channel experts depending on what we're testing. Your growth marketer is your map maker and wayfinder — keeping goals clearly defined and the whole team focused on creating the smartest path to growth. Your channel experts are the in-the-weeds, watching-every-dollar-spent efficiency finders and optimizers. What are the pros and cons of hiring an agency like Tuff, compared to an in-house marketer? Finding a full-time hire is a great option for many companies. But they come with their own set of pros and cons when compared to a plug-in growth marketing team. The major benefit is the expertise and time they bring to the team. Pulling a full-time, smart marketing hustler that can squeeze the most out of a small budget and stay in lockstep with everything else you have going on can be a huge asset. The biggest downsides and risks are finding the right fit, investing the high cost and hoping that they can remain your go-to even if it becomes time to test tactics that fall outside of their wheelhouse. Ultimately, an in-house hire is right if you're already confident in the channels that work for you and just need someone to help you refine and grow those 1-2 channels. When you hire a growth marketing agency, though, the major, overarching benefit is that it typically comes stacked with a full team that can get a holistic view of your business, collaborate to identify the best course of action and delegate execution tasks to true channel experts. With an agency, you can often reallocate resources as you learn and move more quickly because the team has a long history of experience. Have you worked with a talented individual or agency who helped you find and keep more users? Respond to our survey and help other startups find top growth marketers they can work with! How do you charge clients, and why? Most performance marketing agencies pocket a percentage of the amount of ad spend they’re managing or of revenue generated by their tactics. Neither of those methods is wrong by any means. But we deliberately built our pricing system differently: We charge flat-fee retainers based on the number of services we’re plugging in at once. Why? Because growth marketing is fickle. Sometimes, even the best GM in the game can predict that a mix of PPC, SEO content and social ads is the golden ticket. But when one of them underperforms, it’s not a sign of something gone wrong, it’s a sign that it’s time to try something new. The way our process functions at Tuff allows us to seamlessly sub in new services or team members to try something new (like CRO or creative development) without a hitch until we find the mix that's just right. Can’t your clients simply all follow the same growth marketing playbook? Scaling any business is hard, and growth marketing is not a [magic] trick. I've yet to see a playbook that you can take from one business and apply to the next and get consistent results. We work with more than just e-commerce businesses; we flex into SaaS, fintech and B2B industries and it's forced us to truly develop a model/process for growth and not just a playbook, meaning our channel and tactic mix is always different. I think something that we focus on more than most is quick, fearless testing, then finding ways of operationalizing the early wins so they can become repeatable. It's one thing to coax wins out of champion channels, and it's another to know that your big-picture strategy is going to hold up under the pressure of scale. Your site mentions “rapid experimentation” and “quick wins.” Can you detail how Tuff does that? We know that even our most experienced growth marketers can develop an original growth plan that doesn't drive results the way we want it to, despite extensive research and strategizing. That's one of the reasons why we like growth marketing so much, there's no gilded road to success. So, instead of setting a strategy in stone, we'll start every new partnership with a plan to test a range of different tactics within our chosen channels and check in every single day to gauge performance, reallocate budgets, glean insights and prioritize quick wins. After a few weeks, we'll be able to emerge from our sea of data to outline what worked, what didn't work quite as well as planned, and our game plan for driving longer-term success. How do you make sure these early wins hold up under the pressure of scale? In our earliest weeks of a partnership with any of our clients, we're focused on not only driving quick wins, but designing our tests and articulating our hypotheses in ways that not only uncover insights for the following quarter, but for the next year and beyond. More so, I think some of our strongest attributes as a team are our hunger to keep learning, our curiosity and our fearlessness when it comes to adapting, even if it means turning away from a tactic that's held up for us in the past. One of the best ways to illustrate this is the intro message a new prospect sent us last week: "Our current agency was great — until iOS 14.5 and then things went south because they only knew how to do the one thing." True, we saw CPCs [cost per click] shoot up and CVR [conversion rate] plummet soon after iOS 14.5 came out just like every other growth marketing team on the planet. But what allows us to scale is the same thing that allowed us to get every one of our clients back on track post-iOS 14.5: fearlessness, curiosity and adeptness. Why did you choose to have an in-house creative team? Ad creative is truly distinct from brand creative and, simply, we had a heck of a time finding agencies or even freelancers that could produce content optimized for ad channels on a tight budget and an efficient timeline. Around the same time that this problem started to hinder our ability to quickly and efficiently optimize our campaigns, there were a handful of founders that reached out looking for a growth marketing team that could drive revenue growth and also validate/battle test their messaging and value props. So, we tried it out: We designed a few tests to measure the effectiveness of different value props, created visual assets that represented those in a clear, efficient way, measured the results and found that it all just clicked. Long before ad creative was brought in-house, though, we had been working with a set of incredibly talented UX designers. Over the years, CRO became a much more tried-and-true element of our growth marketing strategies, and when the seeds of the ad creative team started to sprout, we knew that bringing creative in-house would anchor everything in place. How has being a remote team fared out so far? We've been a remote team since day one and this helps us be really thoughtful about ways we communicate internally and with our clients. Aside from setting the growth strategy for each company we work with, choosing the tools and executing tactics, we've learned how to be master communicators. As a remote team, we've had to put a lot of time and energy into creating a culture rooted in transparency and authenticity. I like to think that this seeps into our client relationships, too. The more informed, honest and clear conversations we can have as a team and with our clients, the better work we will all do.  |
| Who needs a BaaS partner, anyway? Posted: 30 Sep 2021 01:31 PM PDT Over the last several years, a series of startups have emerged to cut through the complexity of launching financial services by offering technology that sits on top of partner banks' infrastructure and enables developers to spin up bank accounts, payments and card capabilities through APIs. These banking-as-a-service (BaaS) startups promise to offer fintech capabilities to other companies without them having to strike deals with partner banks, integrate with the banking core, or hire the technical or compliance personnel necessary to test or launch a new financial product. As a result, it's never been faster or easier to launch a fintech app or add a banking component to an existing vertical SaaS business. To get a better understanding of the problem BaaS providers are trying to solve, we spoke with several founders in this space, including Unit CEO Itai Damti, Bond CEO Roy Ng, and Synctera CEO Peter Hazlehurst, among others. Cutting through the complexity of financial servicesIn the early days of the fintech market, startups were largely on their own when building or launching a new financial services app. Bringing a new financial product to market typically meant finding a bank partner and signing a long-term contract, creating and implementing compliance policies with that bank, and then finally building out the tech needed to support whatever financial app or service you were looking to offer to end users. For startups, that meant large upfront investments of time and money just to lay the groundwork for launching a new product long before establishing product-market fit. It also meant a lot of duplicative work not just by startups to build up the necessary infrastructure needed to launch a financial product, but also between banks as they signed up and offered fintech partners access to their banking systems. "The amount of work and pain that is involved in launching even something simple, even just checking accounts — you need to navigate the partner ecosystem of 30 to 40 banks that don’t always understand your business, then you need to write 15 to 20 compliance policies and operationalize them," said Unit founder and CEO Itai Damti. Now a lot of that complexity can be outsourced to BaaS companies that already have the bank relationships, APIs for embedding financial services into their apps and the ability to run compliance programs on behalf of their customers. And venture capitalists have lined up to fund them, including rounds announced by companies like Rize ($11.4 million), Synctera ($33 million) and Unit ($51 million) over just the last three months. But who benefits from working with a BaaS provider?  |
| Aurora shines spotlight on autonomous truck tech, strategy ahead of SPAC merger Posted: 30 Sep 2021 12:56 PM PDT On Interstate 45 in Texas, a billboard with “Aurora” emblazoned at the top in giant white letters offers a cryptic message: “A new way to drive is on the horizon.” It’s hard to know just how many of the thousands of drivers on this stretch of road know what that means or what Aurora is; the autonomous vehicle technology company is hardly a household name even as it (along with several competitors) aims to forever change how people and packages get from Point A to Point B. But Aurora, which plans to join the public markets via a merger with a blank-check company, placed the spotlight on its products this week, inviting reporters, analysts, and partners like PACCAR, Toyota and Volvo, as well as existing and potential new investors to ride in its autonomous trucks and get a closer view of its tech. It also shared an update on its operations, including that it is beginning to map and test a new route in Texas. The so-called “Aurora Illuminated” event was held at an auspicious time for the company. Aurora, which was founded in 2017 by Sterling Anderson, Drew Bagnell and Chris Urmson, has more than doubled in size to more than 1,600 employees in less than a year through its acquisition of Uber’s self-driving unit. It is now on the precipice of becoming a publicly traded company with an implied valuation of $13 billion through a merger with special purpose acquisition company Reinvent Technology Partners Y. That deal, which was announced in July and confirmed TechCrunch’s earlier reporting, is expected to go to a shareholder vote this year. If approved, Aurora will make its public debut on the Nasdaq shortly after. The company has not disclosed either of these dates. To say that Aurora has officially “made it” would be presumptive and premature. But the company has navigated a number of hurdles — notably raising considerable capital, securing key partnerships and ramping up testing — that puts it on the path toward commercialization. And it has made material progress in the competitive autonomous trucking landscape where other well-funded and partnered companies — such as Waymo and publicly traded TuSimple and smaller startups like Gatik and Kodiak Robotics — are playing. Progress reportAurora first landed in Texas a year ago. Today, it’s using its autonomous trucks (always with two safety drivers) to carry loads for Barcel, the Takis spicy chips and snacks manufacturer, along a route in Texas between its Dallas, Palmer and Houston terminals. The company also began to carry freight for FedEx between Dallas and Houston as part of a pilot program announced earlier this month. Paccar trucks that are equipped with Aurora’s technology will be used multiple times a week to complete the nearly 500-mile route along Interstate 45, according to FedEx. The plan is to add more terminals in El Paso and San Antonio, then stretch west to Phoenix and Los Angeles, south to Laredo and east to New Orleans. The network that Aurora envisions will encompass the Western and Eastern seaboards and eventually the entire country. Aurora has not shared when it expects to move beyond Texas. It just started testing — without freight — the 630-mile route between El Paso and Dallas. On the routes where it is hauling goods, the company has always delivered within the allotted time frame, according to co-founder and chief product officer Sterling Anderson. “That’s awesome and an exciting example of operational excellence,” co-founder and CEO Chris Urmson said in an interview at the event. “Over the longer term, because we won’t have the hours-of-service limitations when we’re able to operate our vehicles without drivers on board — that when there is a dramatic leap forward.”  Image Credits: Aurora The rideThe ride, which TechCrunch took twice, began in the parking lot of its South Dallas Terminal in Palmer, Texas. The truck is a Peterbilt 579 integrated with Aurora’s autonomous vehicle system and customized in partnership with Paccar. The system, which the company has dubbed the “Aurora Driver,” includes cameras, radar and a combination of long- and medium-range light detection and ranging radar sensors referred to as lidar. The long-range lidar was developed in-house after its acquisition of Blackmore. (Aurora has since acquired a second lidar company, OURS Technology. The medium-range lidar sensors are from an undisclosed supplier. A massive computer with cooling units sits in the rear of the cabin. Other displays, including one that shows the vehicle in motion, its intended path and image classifications made along the way, are also in the cabin. Two safety operators are in the vehicle. The so-called pilot holds a commercial truck driver’s license, or CDL, and the co-pilot is there watching and calling out the intended path as well as acting as a spotter for other vehicles, pedestrians or objects in the road.  Image Credits: Kirsten Korosec “We don’t just see them as testers; they give us a ton of really good guidance and advice not just in the technology and how they’re feeling it, but also the rules of the road” Lia Theodosiou-Pisanelli, Aurora’s VP of partners and programs, said during a safety briefing prior to entering the truck. “For example, a truck driver wouldn’t do that, you take a wide turn, this is how you do it, this is how you operate, this is what other drivers are going to expect. They also have a really good understanding of customer expectations.” All operators, which are employees of Aurora and not contract workers, go through weeks of training on vehicle controls, defensive driving and putting them through scenarios on a closed track. Twelve “pilots” have gone through the training, which takes between six and eight weeks, and are in trucks today. Others are in the pipeline. Both test rides began with the truck driving autonomously from the terminal lot to a frontage road, where it then took an on-ramp onto Interstate 45. The truck traveled along 45 about 13 miles before exiting, turning left to travel under the freeway. After a stop sign, the truck took one more left to enter the interstate once more and head back to the terminal. The round trip was about 28 miles.  Image Credits: Kirsten Korosec While it’s difficult to provide a thorough assessment of AV tech in these kinds of demonstrations, it does provide a snapshot of the system and, importantly, what kind of “driver” a company is trying to develop. In Aurora’s case, the company is taking a cautious approach. The truck will not exceed 65 miles per hour on the highway, even when the posted speed limit is 75 mph. The truck also stays in the far right lane except to provide space for a merging vehicle or to overtake slower ones. It also always moves to the other lane if a vehicle is stopped on the shoulder, per state law. Aurora has also directed its safety operators to “disengage,” meaning to take over manual control, in active construction zones where workers are present, instances when emergency vehicles approach with lights activated, and amid any “crazy actors,” as Theodosiou-Pisanelli describes it. “Anytime we have a disengagement, it’s an experience we learn from,” she said. “We tell them to be proactive about disengaging; it doesn’t impact our ability to learn from that experience because we can put it through the simulator and see what the system would have done.” The company says it has already driven more than 4.5 million on-road miles, as well as billions of miles in its virtual testing suite. During my ride, the safety operator took control once on a section along the frontage road as a pickup truck sitting in a driveway inched forward and appeared to be about to turn in front of the semi. For the remainder of the two rides, the truck did operate autonomously and smoothly, with one slightly more aggressive braking event when a slower vehicle moved in front of it. What they showedUnderneath a temporary structure outfitted with slick lighting, carpet, seating and decor reminiscent of a Tesla reveal event, the company laid out its strategy and showed off prototypes and educational explainers of its technology, including its lidar and simulation. The aim was to indicate what is behind its plan to deploy an autonomous trucking business by late 2023 and ride-hailing in late 2024. The company displayed two different vehicle prototypes that it says will ultimately deliver vehicles that move goods and people autonomously through the world. They showed the Volvo VNL truck, a design prototype of Volvo’s first autonomous truck, intended for commercial production. On-road testing of the VNL will begin in 2022. Aurora also displayed its AV-ready Toyota Sienna prototype that is intended for mass production. Aurora is integrating its AV system into the vehicle and will have a testing fleet of about a dozen vehicles out for testing and validation in Pittsburgh, the San Francisco Bay Area and Texas, the company said. The road aheadAurora was not ready to talk about future partners. But strategically speaking, Anderson noted that the market is huge, that “there are a lot of players, and we’re talking to many of them.” The pair did weigh in on teleassistance technology, which is when humans in an off-site location monitor and then can send path planning instructions to the autonomous vehicle if needed, that they haven’t discussed in detail before. “From day one, we’ve thought teleassist would be part of the technology,” Urmson said. "We've modeled at a pretty fine granularity what happens in and around terminals,” Anderson said of its progress to date, noting that it has every step charted out. "So we have a pretty strong understanding of what the end-to-end support requirement is. What we don’t have quite yet is how frequently we’re going to require a teleassistance event or roadside assistance when we don’t have a driver in the truck." Urmson and Anderson confirmed that the company is testing a teleassist technology on a closed track and public roads and will be working with its partners to determine the best approach for commercial operations.  |
| TikTok starts flirting with NFTs Posted: 30 Sep 2021 12:33 PM PDT The NFT space has had quite the year, and while it can be difficult to separate the billions of dollars in crypto speculation from the potential infrastructure shifts, plenty of mainstream tech companies are dipping their toes into the space and signaling future interest. This time it’s TikTok’s turn. The fast-growing social media platform, which just crossed 1 billion monthly users worldwide, has lined up its own NFT drop, leveraging content from some of its top creators, including Lil Nas X, Grimes, Bella Poarch, Rudy Willingham and Gary Vaynerchuk. The release of one-of-one and limited edition NFTs seems to be focused on generating buzz among the existing NFT community rather than exposing users inside the app to non-fungible tokens. The company is side-stepping blockchain energy concerns by placing their NFTs on a dedicated site powered by Immutable X, a Layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum which says that NFTs traded using it are “100% carbon neutral.” The drop starts October 6 with a collection from Lil Nas X and will continue on through the end of the month. Why is TikTok getting into the world of NFTs to begin with? TikTok has a fairly precise answer for that on its drop site:
It’s clearly a niche early experiment for the company, which hasn’t previously indicated the same level of NFT interest that platforms like Twitter and Facebook have shown, but it also showcases that they think NFTs are a space worth paying some attention to.
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| Posted: 30 Sep 2021 12:00 PM PDT Clubhouse announced today that it is unveiling four new features: Clips, Replay, Universal Search and spatial audio for Android (which already exists on iOS). All of these features will launch today, except for Replay, which will roll out in October. These additions will help expand Clubhouse’s reach by making content available even after a live conversation has ended, allowing for asynchronous engagement. Clips will allow live listeners in public rooms to snip the most recent 30 seconds of audio and share it anywhere — so, if you’re listening to a speaker who says something particularly wise (or not), you can create a clip, which generates a shareable moment with a link to join the room. These can be shared on other social media platforms. Hosts can decide whether or not they want listeners to be able to make clips in their room — if clips are turned on, users will be able to tap a scissor icon to make one. Clubhouse already acknowledges that there’s a danger in letting people share 30-second audio clips out of context. A bad actor could potentially clip audio to obscure what someone really meant (you might say “the museum is always free on Friday,” but the clip could stop at “the museum is always free” — of course, Clubhouse is concerned about more sinister examples than this). So, to begin, Clubhouse is rolling out clips in beta to a small group of creators. Clubhouse has struggled with content moderation in its short history, and recently, doctors have been reportedly forced off the app due to harassment from anti-vaxxers. In light of these challenges, it makes sense that Clubhouse is more slowly unveiling this feature.  Image Credits: Clubhouse Universal Search improves discoverability on Clubhouse, so that when users type a keyword or name into the search bar, they can find relevant rooms (both live and scheduled), people, clubs and bios. And Clubhouse says it’s bringing Spatial Audio to Android after positive feedback from iOS users. But even amid these feature updates, Clubhouse still has made itself inaccessible to deaf and hard of hearing users by failing to add live captioning. Of these new features, Replay could be the biggest game-changer for the app — it will allow creators to record a room, save it to their profile and club, or download the audio to share it externally, like on a podcast feed. Hosts and moderators can choose whether or not they want the room to be recorded. Earlier this month, former PayPal COO David Sacks launched Callin, a “social podcasting” app that functions like a Clubhouse live audio room, but allows users to save and edit recordings into podcasts through the app. Then, Twitter said it would add recorded Spaces too. Now, Clubhouse’s Replay feature will make it more competitive. Though Clubhouse has tried to appeal to live audio creators through its “Creator First” program, reports suggest that the endeavor fell short of expectations. But if Clubhouse wants to appeal to creators, this easier way of saving and sharing audio can help keep hosts on the platform. Though the appeal of apps like Clubhouse is the ability to have a shared, live experience, allowing for asynchronous listening can help people grow their audience.  |
| South Korean ISP SK Broadband counterclaims against Netflix for bandwidth usage fees Posted: 30 Sep 2021 12:00 PM PDT South Korean internet service provider SK Broadband, a subsidiary of South Korean telco company SK Telecom, has filed a counterclaim against Netflix to demand payment for the bandwidth the streaming platform has used for the last three years. This case comes in the wake of the South Korean court siding against Netflix in June in the case. Now SK Broadband is empowered to levy network usage fees on streaming platforms for consuming an excessive amount of bandwidth and causing heavy traffic on its network. "We will review the claim that SK Broadband has filed against us. In the meantime, we continue to seek open dialogue and explore ways of working with SK Broadband in order to ensure a seamless streaming experience for our shared customers," a Netflix spokesperson told TechCrunch. The U.S. streaming giant lodged an appeal to a higher court against the court decision in July after it lost the first court case that the company filed in 2020. That case alleged that SK Broadband, which is responsible for managing its networks, has no right to demand fees for the bandwidth. Netflix has claimed that the ISP was trying to “double bill” — its subscribers already pay for broadband use, and now want to charge the streaming company for it, too. SK Broadband plans to charge about $23 million per year for network use, as per local media reports. Back in 2019, SK Broadband requested the Korea Communication Commission come to a settlement, but the two companies couldn't find an agreement. SK Broadband claims that Netflix's traffic on the ISP network has exponentially increased about 24 times, from 50 Gigabits per second in May 2018 to 1,200 Gigabits in September 2021. Netflix says on 28 September that its investment in content production in South Korea has brought socio-economic impact worth $4.7 billion, covering everything from publishing to consumer goods. It claims to have led to the creation of 16,000 jobs in the country since it opened in 2016, using figures from a Deloitte Consulting report. Netflix Korea has 3.8 million paid subscriptions in South Korea as of the end of 2020, while its global paid memberships were estimated at 200 million, as per the report by Deloitte Consulting. The Netflix spokesperson said on a separate note that the Korean show "Squid Game" is now on track to be Netflix's biggest show ever and it's the first Korean show to ever be No. 1 on Netflix U.S. Meanwhile, another global streaming giant, Disney Plus, is set to launch in South Korea in November. Disney Plus reportedly plans to use third-party content delivery networks (CDNs) instead of using ISP's networks to avoid the bandwidth usage fees.  |
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