TechCrunch |
- a16z-backed Loom lays off 14% of staff, one year after becoming a unicorn
- Poparazzi hits 5M+ downloads a year after launch, confirms its $15M Series A
- SureImpact wins the TC City Spotlight: Columbus Pitch-Off
- Daily Crunch: Buick unveils Wildcat concept car as company shifts to EV-only lineup
- This is the beginning of the unbundled database era
- Google bans deepfake-generating AI from Colab
- Garmin pops solar power onto its fancy Forerunner running watch
- Sheryl Sandberg will step down as Meta COO
- VC funding for crypto projects fell in May, but many investors remain bullish
- Boldstart Ventures has two new funds to plug into teams with an idea and little else
- Slack now supports pronunciation guides in profiles
- Why more funding equates more peace of mind for TRIPP and its users
- Who’s liable for AI-generated lies?
- Former OpenSea exec arrested and charged with insider trading of NFTs
- Google expands program to help train the formerly incarcerated
- Boundary Layer wants to steal air freight’s lunch and transport it by water instead
- The US is about to get serious about EVs
- Plenty of opportunities for students at TC Sessions: Climate
- Dear Sophie: How do we qualify for each of the O-1A criteria?
- Report shows that Safari reaches one billion worldwide users, still behind Google Chrome
| a16z-backed Loom lays off 14% of staff, one year after becoming a unicorn Posted: 01 Jun 2022 04:16 PM PDT Loom, an enterprise collaboration video messaging service, has laid off 34 employees, or 14% of its total staff, sources say. Employees across product and people operations were impacted. The venture-backed company confirmed the layoff and number of people impacted, and provided the following statement from founder and CEO Joe Thomas:
The company was founded by Thomas and Vinay Hiremath in 2015, hitting 1.8 million users across 50,000 businesses just three years later. Per its website, Loom currently boasts 14 million users across 200,000 companies — including Netflix, Atlassian, HubSpot and Juniper Networks. Similar to Hopin, Loom benefited from a surge of people working from home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; the product was positioned to help remote workers find better ways to connect with colleagues in a virtual-first world, and help hybrid workforces find a lightweight way to skip some meetings. Then, again similar to Hopin, the startup conducted layoffs to help it build in what it describes as a more sustainable way moving forward. That growth has attracted $203 million in known venture capital funding, with the company most recently announcing a Series C led by Andreessen Horowitz. The same round valued the company at $1.53 billion, making it hit unicorn status for the first time. Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Coatue and General Catalyst are also investors in the company. Over a year has gone by since the startup landed the new financing and valuation, and per today's news, Loom joins the club of unicorns that have had to scale back workforces after landing the coveted milestone. Less than a year ago, visual creator tools startup Picsart raised $130 million from SoftBank, landing a valuation of over $1 billion. The company laid off 8% of its staff last month, affecting 90 people. Cameo, which also became a unicorn last year, also recently conducted layoffs that impacted 87 people.
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| Poparazzi hits 5M+ downloads a year after launch, confirms its $15M Series A Posted: 01 Jun 2022 03:24 PM PDT Poparazzi, the anti-Instagram social app that hit the top of the App Store last year, is today, for the first time, detailing the growth stats for its business, its future plans and its previously unconfirmed Benchmark-led Series A round. The L.A.-area startup now reports its iOS-only has seen over 5 million installs in its first year, with users primarily in the Gen Z demographic. The startup says that 75% of its users are between the ages of 14 and 18 and 95% of users are between 14 and 21. Most of its users are U.S. based, and to date, they’ve shared over 100 million photos and videos on the app. While the startup positioned itself as an Instagram alternative where friends create your profile, the app’s competition today is not really the established tech giants. Instead, it’s the newer set of “alternative” social media apps that are targeting a younger crowd, like Yubo, Locket, LiveIn, HalloApp, BeReal and others. In general, this group of apps shares a thesis around how big tech is no longer the best place to connect with your real-life friends. With differentiated angles, they all claim to offer that opportunity. Some of these are already outpacing Poparazzi. Yubo says it’s seen 60 million sign-ups to date. BeReal, which has declined press, has an estimated 12.3 million global downloads, according to app intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The firm also reports that Locket has seen about 18.7 million worldwide installs to date, while LiveIn has hit a little more than 8 million installs. (Sensor Tower also sees 4.6 million downloads for Poparazzi, which is largely in line with the startup’s claims, as these estimates aren’t an exact science.) This heated competition among alternative social apps could explain why Poparazzi is taking to its blog today to share its metrics and confirm its financing after a year of silence. (Or it could be that it’s hiring.)  Image Credits: Poparazzi Though Poparazzi appears to be an overnight viral sensation, it’s actually taken 3 years to get to this point, explains co-founder and CEO Alex Ma. He, along with his brother, co-founder Austen Ma, went through several pivots to get to Poparazzi, he told TechCrunch. “Poparazzi was maybe the 11th or 12th app that we built,” Alex says. Among those was the audio social network TTYL, a sort of “Clubhouse for friends.” But, says Alex, 9 months into TTYL the team realized that things weren’t working and they made the decision to wind it down. The co-founders understood that most social apps fail and had decided the best thing to do was to keep building and experimenting until one hit. At other points, they tested a live texting app called Typo and many other social experiences. But when they built Poparazzi, they knew from day one it was something special. The app blew up, primarily among high schoolers, who were testing the app via TestFlight. The app’s idea was, effectively, to turn one of Instagram’s core features — photo tagging — into a stand-alone experience. But in its case, photo tagging wasn’t an afterthought; it was the full focus.  Image Credits: Poparazzi On Poparazzi, users can create social profiles for photo-sharing purposes, but only your friends are allowed to post photos to them. That makes your friends your own “paparazzi,” of sorts — which is how the app got its name. “It started off almost like a novel, dumb idea — like, what if you could build Instagram but didn’t let people post photos of themselves?” Alex says. “But the more we thought about it, the more we realized we were actually fundamentally changing the engine of what drives social today. And that was the big bet.” To its credit, Poparazzi perfectly executed a series of growth hacks to generate buzz for its app that drove downloads at launch. The app launched on May 24, 2021, and quickly shot to the No. 1 position on the App Store. Like many apps now, it smartly leveraged the TikTok hype cycle to drive App Store preorders. This helped to ensure the app would hit the Top Charts as soon as it became publicly available, given how the App Store ranks apps based on a combination of downloads and velocity, among other factors. Poparazzi also implemented a clever onboarding screen that used haptics to buzz and vibrate your phone as its intro video played — something that helped generate word-of-mouth growth as users took to Twitter to post about the unique experience. But the app also bypassed some best practices around user privacy by requesting full access to users’ address books to get started. This allowed it to instantly match users to their friends based on stored phone numbers and quickly build a social graph. However, it overlooked the fact that many people, particularly women, store the phone numbers of abusers, stalkers and exes in their phone's contacts, so they can use the phone’s built-in tools to block the person’s calls and texts. Because Poparazzi automatically matched people by phone number, abusers could gain immediate access to the user profiles of the people they were trying to harass or hurt. Alex says Poparazzi has since taken steps to address this, but explains the thinking around the original decision. “It’s really hard to compete with Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram for the social graph,” he says. “So the starting point for building a social app typically is the address book because that’s the place where we can get information.” Plus, he adds, “I think the value of the app is close to zero without that initial friend graph.”  Image Credits: Poparazzi The app also rolled out other new features over the past year, including the ability to block and report users, and it’s invested in machine learning–powered content moderation for detecting things like nudity or hate speech. It’s added the ability to upload from the camera roll; provided support for video, messaging, comments and captions; and introduced in-app challenges that encourage participation — like “pop a friend eating ice cream,” “pop a friend at a mall,” or “pop a road trip.” It’s now working to allow users to set their profiles to private and is planning an Android version. Longer term, it may monetize via events or merchandise, not ads — but this is still largely to be determined. Prior to today’s update, the broad strokes of Poparazzi’s A round were already known. In May 2021, Newcomer scooped the news that Benchmark partner Sarah Tavel had led Poparazzi’s “approximately $20 million” Series A, beating out Andreessen Horowitz for the deal. Alex says the round was actually a $15 million Series A, and confirmed Tavel joined its board. This is on top of the company’s $2 million seed round closed in late 2018, before Poparazzi was developed. That round was led by Floodgate and included other investors like SV Angel, Shrug Capital and various angels. (Disclosure: unbeknownst to us until now, former TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Bonatsos was among them.) Floodgate’s Ann Miura-Ko joined the board with that fundraiser. The funding gives Poparazzi, now a team of 15, a runway of over 2 years, Alex says. And although some of the competition may be ahead of it for now, the startup believes in its potential largely because its premise is unique. Unlike every other social app on the market, it’s not for performative social media. “We’re very different in the sense that it’s not about yourself,” Alex points out. “We’re putting the attention on the people you’re physically with, and the people that are in your life, rather than on yourself.” |
| SureImpact wins the TC City Spotlight: Columbus Pitch-Off Posted: 01 Jun 2022 03:20 PM PDT I’m excited to announce SureImpact won today’s City Spotlight: Columbus pitch-off! Winning a free exhibition space at TechCrunch Disrupt 2022 and a spot in TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200, the Ohio-based company pitched alongside Skuld and Healia Health on TechCrunch Live earlier today. Founder and CEO Sheri Chaney Jones pitched to two fantastic judges — Anna Mason (Managing Partner, Rise of the Rest Seed Fund at Revolution) and Parul Singh (General Partner, Initialized Capital). In four minutes, Chaney Jones explained how SureImpact modernizes the social service and social impact sectors. With a case management-based integrated platform, SureImpact’s SaaS platform allows both the organization and its funders to clearly understand key impact metrics and ROI — in real time and with less demand on nonprofits. Historically, organizations relied on top-level impact metrics to share with those that contribute into the organization. With the increasing demand in real-time social impact data, nonprofits are required to elevate their tracking and reporting capacities. SureImpact solves the technology gap with automated data collection and impact evaluation capacity that connects all players in the social impact ecosystem. Chaney Jones says nonprofits no longer need to “waste time manipulating reports for their funders, and wasting funders’ time by having to wade through grant narratives and aggregated data to understand their collective impact.” The company says it developed the product with 10 paid beta customers, paying $15,000 annually. After launching in February 2020, the company touts a whopping 220 organizations on its platform, across 50 U.S. markets. SureImpact has raised approximately $1.6 million in funding from a variety of angels and VCs. An expert in her own right, Chaney Jones has more than 20 years of experience in the nonprofit sector, as a serial social impact founder and working directly with mission-driven organizations. Special thanks to the wonderful judges and the founders who took the stage with fire and pitch mastery. |
| Daily Crunch: Buick unveils Wildcat concept car as company shifts to EV-only lineup Posted: 01 Jun 2022 03:05 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. Extra, extra, read all about it — Sheryl Sandberg surprised us this afternoon and said she was stepping down as Meta COO. We're still figuring out the details, so stay tuned for more. And oh Hai! Or rather, Ohio — more specifically, Columbus, Ohio. Today, we're doing our City Spotlight, and we've been exploring who's building in Columbus, and how it became the tech hub of the Midwest. We also dove into why Intel chose the city to build its $20 billion manufacturing facilities. — Haje and Christine The TechCrunch Top 3
Startups and VCEvery time I explain what a SPAC is to someone, they go, "Wait, how is that legal?" It seems like some folks in government agree, Connie reports, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren planning a new bill to tame the wild, wild west a little. The law may be a little late — interest was on the wane already, when the SEC warned in March last year that SPACs weren't accounting correctly for investor incentives called warrants. The other thing we want to celebrate is irreverence and joy. Haje needed wafting with palm fronds after getting a little excited about a new photo-forward book about electronics, and Amanda lost her marbles over a couple of new Pokémon, including one called Lechonk. Other things to get excited about:
Dear Sophie: How do we qualify for each of the O-1A criteria? Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch Dear Sophie, Our startup will be sponsoring my co-founders and me for O-1A visas. How do we qualify for each of the O-1A criteria? — Extraordinary Entrepreneur (TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.) Big Tech Inc.We promised above, and now we are delivering all of the delicious Google-ly goodness. Let's start with some news that will make you smile — Google is expanding its program aimed at providing job readiness and digital skills for formerly incarcerated people. The company will also invest $4 million in reducing barriers for these individuals to become gainfully employed. Next is a report showing that Chrome still edges out Apple's Safari for users, though Apple should still celebrate reaching 1 billion users. Not to be undone by:
Not much of a surprise with this next report, but it seems the U.K.'s new social media watchdog group Ofcom has found that social media giants are not taking women's safety seriously. Its study of some 6,000 people found that even though women spend a bit more time than men online, they still don't feel like they can express their opinions as freely as their male counterparts. In turn, Ofcom is urging social media companies to do something about it, namely make their platforms more welcoming. Cryptocurrency has not been feeling the love lately, what with the whole TerraUSD thing, among others, and today the sector takes another hit as one of its own is arrested. Formal charges were made against former OpenSea head of product Nate Chastain for "wire fraud and money laundering in connection with a scheme to commit insider trading." Chastain was fired from his job last year after being accused of "front-running purchases of NFT collections that he knew were about to be featured prominently on the homepage of OpenSea." Please enjoy these other morsels:
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| This is the beginning of the unbundled database era Posted: 01 Jun 2022 03:04 PM PDT Thanks to the cloud, the amount of data being generated and stored has exploded in scale and volume. Every aspect of the enterprise is being instrumented for data, so new operations are built based on that data, pushing every company into becoming a data company. One of the most profound and maybe non-obvious shifts driving this is the emergence of the cloud database. Services such as Amazon S3, Google BigQuery, Snowflake and Databricks have solved computing on large volumes of data and have made it easy to store data from every available source. The enterprise wants to store everything they can in the hopes of being able to deliver improved customer experiences and new market capabilities. It’s a good time to be a database companyDatabase companies have raised over $8.7 billion over the last 10 years, with almost half of that, $4.1 billion, just in the last 24 months, according to CB Insights. It's not surprising given the sky-high valuations of Snowflake and Databricks. The market doubled in the last four years to almost $90 billion, and is expected to double again over the next four years. It’s safe to say there is a huge opportunity to go after. See here for a solid list of database financings in 2021.  Database growth is driving spend in the enterprise. Image Credits: Venrock 20 years ago, you had one option: A relational databaseToday, thanks to the cloud, microservices, distributed applications, global scale, real-time data and deep learning, new database architectures have emerged to solve for new performance requirements. We now have different systems for fast reads and fast writes. There are also systems specifically to power ad-hoc analytics or for data that is unstructured, semi-structured, transactional, relational, graph or time-series, as well as for data used for cache, search, based on indexes, events and more.
It may come as a surprise, but there are still billions of dollars in Oracle instances still powering critical apps today, and they likely aren't going anywhere. Each system comes with different performance needs, including high availability, horizontal scale, distributed consistency, failover protection, partition tolerance and being serverless and fully managed. As a result, enterprises, on average, store data across seven or more different databases. For example, you may have Snowflake as your data warehouse, Clickhouse for ad-hoc analytics, Timescale for time-series data, Elastic for their search data, S3 for logs, Postgres for transactions, Redis for caching or application data, Cassandra for complex workloads and Dgraph* for relationship data or dynamic schemas. That’s all assuming you are collocated to a single cloud and you’ve built a modern data stack from scratch. The level of performance and guarantees from these services and platforms is on a very different level compared with what we had five to 10 years ago. At the same time, the proliferation and fragmentation of the database layer are increasingly creating new challenges. For example, syncing across different schemas and systems, writing new ETL jobs to bridge workloads across multiple databases, constant cross-talk and connectivity issues, the overhead of managing active-active clustering across so many different systems, or data transfers when new clusters or systems come online. Each of these has different scaling, branching, propagation, sharding and resource requirements. What's more, we now have new databases every month that aim to solve the next challenge of enterprise scale. The new-age databaseSo the question is, will the future of the database continue to be defined as it is today? |
| Google bans deepfake-generating AI from Colab Posted: 01 Jun 2022 02:49 PM PDT Google has banned the training of AI systems that can be used to generate deepfakes on its Google Colaboratory platform. The updated terms of use, spotted over the weekend by BleepingComputer, includes deepfakes-related work in the list of disallowed projects. Colaboratory, or Colab for short, spun out from an internal Google Research project in late 2017. It’s designed to allow anyone to write and execute arbitrary Python code through a web browser, particularly code for machine learning, education and data analysis. For the purpose, Google provides both free and paying Colab users access to hardware including GPUs and Google’s custom-designed, AI-accelerating tensor processing units (TPUs). In recent years, Colab has become the de facto platform for demos within the AI research community. It’s not uncommon for researchers who’ve written code to include links to Colab pages on or alongside the GitHub repositories hosting the code. But Google hasn’t historically been very restrictive when it comes to Colab content, potentially opening the door for actors who wish to use the service for less scrupulous purposes. Users of the open source deepfake generator DeepFaceLab became aware of the terms of use change last week, when several received an error message after attempting to run DeepFaceLab in Colab. The warning read: “You may be executing code that is disallowed, and this may restrict your ability to use Colab in the future. Please note the prohibited actions specified in our FAQ.” Not all code triggers the warning. This reporter was able to run one of the more popular deepfake Colab projects without issue, and Reddit users report that another leading project, FaceSwap, remains fully functional. This suggests enforcement is blacklist — rather than keyword —based, and that the onus will be on the Colab community to report code that runs afoul of the new rule. Archive.org data shows that Google quietly updated the Colab terms sometime in mid-May. The previous restrictions on things like running denial-of-service attacks, password cracking and downloading torrents were left unchanged. Deepfakes come in many forms, but one of the most common are videos where a person’s face has been convincingly pasted on top of another face. Unlike the crude Photoshop jobs of yesteryear, AI-generated deepfakes can match a person’s body movements, microexpressions and skin tones better than Hollywood-produced CGI in some cases. Deepfakes can be harmless — even entertaining — as countless viral videos have shown. But they’re increasingly being used by hackers to target social media users in extortion and fraud schemes. More nefariously, they’ve been leveraged in political propaganda, for example to create videos of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy giving a speech about the war in Ukraine that he never actually gave. From 2019 to 2021, the number of deepfakes online grew from roughly 14,000 to 145,000, according to one source. Forrester Research estimated in October 2019 that deepfake fraud scams would cost $250 million by the end of 2020. Os Keyes, an adjunct professor at Seattle University, applauded Google’s move to ban deepfake projects from Colab. But he noted that more must be done on the policy side to prevent their creation and spread. “The way that it has been done certainly highlights the poverty of relying on companies self-policing,” Keyes told TechCrunch via email. “Deepfake generation should absolutely not be an acceptable form of work, well, anywhere, and so it’s good that Google is not making itself complicit in that … But the ban doesn’t occur in a vacuum — it occurs in an environment where actual, accountable, responsive regulation of these kinds of development platforms (and companies) is lacking.” Others, particularly those who benefitted from Colab’s previously laissez faire approach to governance, might not agree. Years ago, AI research lab OpenAI initially declined to open source a language-generating model, GPT-2, out of fear that it would be misused. This motivated groups like EleutherAI to leverage tools including Colab to develop and release their own language-generating models, ostensibly for research. When I spoke to Connor Leahy, a member of EleutherAI, last year, he asserted that the commoditization of AI models is part of an “inevitable trend” in the falling price of the production of “convincing digital content” that won’t be derailed whether or not the code is released. In his view, AI models and tools should be made widely available so that “low-resource” users, especially academics, can gain access to better study and perform their own safety-focused research on them. We’ve asked Google whether it plans to make exceptions to the new deepfake policy for research. We’ll update this article if we hear back. |
| Garmin pops solar power onto its fancy Forerunner running watch Posted: 01 Jun 2022 02:08 PM PDT Garmin just brought solar power to its Forerunner line, a cult-favorite among runners. Along with some other devices, the company took the wraps off its new Forerunner 995 Solar today. The $600 running watch packs a new touchscreen display, physical buttons, up to 20 days between charges via its “Power Glass” charging lens, multiband GPS and a new heart rate variability feature, among other things. Garmin is also selling a standard 955 (sans solar), which shaves $100 off of the price and five days off of the effective battery life. Toward the lower end, Garmin also announced the Forerunner 255. As the Verge pointed out, it isn’t all that different from the earlier Forerunner 245. The $350 device adds multiband GPS, contactless payments and some new software features. It comes in two sizes, each with optional music features that’ll set you back another 50 bucks. All of the new watches are available as of June 1.  Garmin’s Forerunner 995 Solar. Image Credits: Garmin Solar-powered digital watches date back to at least the early 70s, so this isn’t what you’d call a groundbreaking launch. Garmin released its first GPS watch with solar power back in 2019 and expanded its solar lineup a year later. But it’s still pretty exciting to see solar on new feature-packed watches, in part because keeping them charged is still a pain. Though specialized watches like Garmin’s can go a lot longer than generalist smartwatches between charges, never having to plug one in again is the dream. Plus, wearables often require proprietary cables to juice up — the sort that can easily get buried in a drawer somewhere. It’d be nice to lose those, too. Sadly, you’ll still need a cable if you decide to snag a 955 Solar. In Garmin land, solar power simply stretches out each charge by a few days. For the 955 Solar, Garmin says the extra $100 for the charging lens can boost its life by as much as five days, with caveats: It assumes the wearer will spend three hours in 50,000 lux conditions per day — that’s about three hours spent outside in indirect sunlight. Office-bound city dwellers won’t hit those numbers year round, at least not in places like New York. |
| Sheryl Sandberg will step down as Meta COO Posted: 01 Jun 2022 01:02 PM PDT Sheryl Sandberg announced today on Facebook that she is leaving Meta after more than a decade as the company’s chief operating officer. Sandberg joined Meta, then Facebook, as COO in 2008. Over the course of 14 years, Sandberg steered the company through an IPO, an unprecedented period of explosive industry growth and its at-times rocky path to becoming one of the most socially impactful and valuable tech companies in the world. Meta’s Chief Growth Officer Javier Olivan will step into the COO role as Sandberg departs. According to a Facebook post on the news from Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Olivan will be in charge of Meta’s ads and business products while overseeing its teams dedicated to “infrastructure, integrity, analytics, marketing, corporate development and growth.” Zuckerberg noted that Olivan’s role as COO will be “different from what Sheryl has done,” a commentary on just how much influence and power Sandberg exercised during her years with the company. “It will be a more traditional COO role where Javi will be focused internally and operationally, building on his strong track record of making our execution more efficient and rigorous,” Zuckerberg wrote, adding that he didn’t plan to replace her role directly. “I think Meta has reached the point where it makes sense for our product and business groups to be more closely integrated, rather than having all the business and operations functions organized separately from our products,” he said. While Sandberg was an outsized presence at the company, Meta has always been synonymous with Zuckerberg and it’s possible that he will have even more direct control of decisions at the company as it reorganizes. In the post, Zuckerberg also took the time to reflect on just how much Sandberg shaped the company into the social media and advertising giant it is today:
Sandberg, who worked for the Clinton administration prior to joining Meta, was widely reported to have expected a role in Hillary Clinton’s cabinet, likely as treasury or commerce secretary. With Donald Trump’s surprise win, those plans were dashed and Sandberg settled in for what would shape up to be a profitable era for the company but one full of uncomfortable reckonings over the social network’s role in propagating disinformation, hate and conspiracies. Just after the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Sandberg falsely claimed that the day’s events were “largely organized on platforms that don't have our abilities to stop hate.” In reality, Facebook played a central role in the “Stop the Steal” movement following the 2020 election after fostering far right groups like QAnon and the Proud Boys for years before taking action. That unforced error was just one of Sandberg’s recent PR blunders. Others include her involvement in contracting the Republican opposition research firm Definers Public Affairs to plant negative stories about liberal billionaire George Soros and a more recent report that Sandberg leveraged the Meta communications team to kill a story about Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, her former boyfriend who is now accused of fostering a culture of sexual harassment at the gaming company. When revelations about Sandberg’s involvement in shaping her former boyfriend’s press coverage hit in late April, The Wall Street Journal also reported that she was facing “internal scrutiny” and an internal review at Meta. The company did not respond to TechCrunch’s questions about the state of that review. While she will exit the C-suite, Sandberg will stay on in her role on Meta’s board of directors. She became the board’s first female member when she joined it in 2012. In a Facebook post, Sandberg opined about her long tenure at the company and the personal challenges she endured over that time, including the death of her husband, Dave Goldberg, in 2015. Reports in recent years suggested that Facebook’s growing political tensions and Sandberg’s handful of high profile missteps strained the relationship between Sandberg and Zuckerberg, though it’s not clear if that paved the way to her departure. In her post, Sandberg reflected on her long relationship with Zuckerberg, who she will continue to work with through the company’s board. ” … On the way in, I asked Mark for three things — that we would sit next to each other, that he would meet with me one-on-one every week, and that in those meetings he would give me honest feedback when he thought I messed something up,” Sandberg wrote. “Mark said yes to all three but added that the feedback would have to be mutual. To this day, he has kept those promises.” |
| VC funding for crypto projects fell in May, but many investors remain bullish Posted: 01 Jun 2022 01:00 PM PDT In 2022, capital is being deployed into crypto at a less noteworthy pace month over month, but in the grand scheme of things, levels are significantly higher than last year, showing that the space has matured significantly and the bar is now much higher. Total venture capital funding in the crypto space fell 38% from $6.829 billion in April to $4.219 billion in May, according to Dove Metrics data. Even though the amount of capital deployed into crypto is down in the short term, it's significantly higher than levels from a year ago: The amount of capital invested in the space last month increased 89% from $2.233 billion in May 2021. Funding may have dropped on the month due to the growing chasm between private and public market valuations for equities and decentralized networks, Will Nuelle, an investor at Galaxy Digital Principal Investments, said to TechCrunch. "[It] has caused venture investors to be tighter on valuations and has caused increasingly wide spreads between founders' asks and investors' bids." There's definitely a valuation reset going on right now, according to Stan Miroshnik, partner and co-founder of 10T Holdings. "For investors like us, it's time to buy," Miroshnik told TechCrunch. "Valuations have come in and great companies are now available at a more reasonable price." "Generally, there is a big difference between people who are at the surface of understanding this space — those funds might take a backseat — but true crypto-native funds with conviction will continue to invest heavily," Saurabh Sharma, head of investments at Jump Crypto, said to TechCrunch. "This time is where we find the best long-term-thinking entrepreneurs." As for where funding is going, blockchain infrastructure is seeing the most capital at 21%, followed by decentralized finance, centralized finance, NFTs and other web3 categories, Dove Metrics data showed. Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) had the least investments at 2%, it said. A shift to an investor-friendly market“Private and public market valuations are both taking a hit," Gabe Frank, CEO and co-founder of Arcade, said to TechCrunch. "Crypto is a risk-on asset class and funding can dry up quickly." The market was founder-friendly for the past two years, but now it's shifting into an investor-friendly market, Frank said. "Financing for smaller projects that depend on token subsidies and early liquidity events is starting to fade. VC capital is mainly on the sidelines but will continue to deploy to tier-1 projects with clear market opportunities and sound fundamentals.” |
| Boldstart Ventures has two new funds to plug into teams with an idea and little else Posted: 01 Jun 2022 01:00 PM PDT Boldstart Ventures, a seed- and early-stage venture firm that markets itself as a “day one partner for developer-first, crypto-infrastructure and SaaS founders,” has closed on two new funds roughly 14 months after announcing its last two funds. The firm — which began in New York with a $1 million proof-of-concept fund in 2010 — has closed its sixth flagship fund with $192.2 million, it is announcing today; it also closed its third opportunity-style fund to back its breakaway companies with $175 million in capital commitments. Early last year, Boldstart closed on $155 million in capital commitments for its fifth flagship fund and $75 million for its second opportunity fund, so its newest later-stage vehicle is a big step up in particular. It also comes at an auspicious time, given that some of the industry’s most active late-stage investors, including SoftBank and Tiger Global, are writing fewer and smaller checks at the moment. (The less competition for late-stage deals, the less frothy the deal terms and the more time for due diligence, and so on.) Not much has changed otherwise, unless you count the move of firm co-founder Ed Sim to Miami, which is notable given that Boldstart’s early focus was largely regional, including a focus on New York, as well as on underfunded Canadian talent. (The firm remains active up north.) The firm will still writes checks as small as $250,000, it says; it is also willing to invest up to $30 million in a single portfolio company. Some of its best-known deals to date include Snyk, a company that helps developers use open source code and stay secure and whose valuation, as of last fall, was $8.5 billon; Blockdaemon, a blockchain infrastructure company valued at $3.25 billion earlier this year; and the data intelligence platform BigID, valued at $1.25 billion by its investors last year. Boldstart was also among the first investors in Kustomer, a startup that specializes in customer-service platforms and chatbots and which Facebook acquired in November 2020 for a reported $1 billion. We talked with Sim last week about the markets, which he noted “suck” right now. At the same time, he’added, “I do think that things [had grown] a bit too frothy.” Among the newer developments he has observed are pulled term sheets, he told us, particularly on the later-stage side. He said he also saw terms for a 2x liquidation preference inserted into a sizable round, meaning investors demanded that in exchange for their funding, they be guaranteed twice the amount of their invested capital in an exit scenario — before anyone else gets paid. Indeed, like a lot of VCs right now, Boldstart is actively counseling its startups to conserve cash so that they aren’t in the position of having to accept terms that can hurt them down the road. “Founders can get shocked when they see that because on the one hand [they’re thinking], ‘I’ve raised money. I maintained my valuation,” said Sims. “The reality is maintaining your valuation is not great if you take a 2x liquidation preference [to do it].” If you do, “under certain scenarios,” he continues, “you’re not gonna make a dime.” |
| Slack now supports pronunciation guides in profiles Posted: 01 Jun 2022 12:06 PM PDT Not everyone is on board with the idea of remote work. But for those who are, Slack’s new profile features released today should make some workday tasks, particularly onboarding, a bit easier. Slack now supports pronunciation guides for profiles, allowing users to add name pronunciations in the form of phonetic spellings or audio recordings. They’ll begin appearing today for some users under the Display Name and Pronounce sections across Slack clients, with a full rollout to start in the coming weeks. Name pronunciations build on Slack’s other inclusivity efforts, including a field for pronouns in profiles. In a related development, Hover Cards — essentially pop-ups — have arrived in Slack. Moving a cursor over a person’s name will reveal a condensed Hover Card version of their profile, along with links to start a “huddle” (i.e., audio conversation), call or direct message.  Image Credits: Slack Lastly, Slack profiles now include three new fields: Contact Information, People and About Me. Contact Information shows email and phone details, while People lists the teams the person works with and their place in the organization’s hierarchy. About Me is more dynamic in nature, but can contain things like start date, languages spoken and even pets and birthdays, depending on what the user chooses to share. Other Slack upgrades pertain to Atlas, Slack’s premium add-on for its Business+ and Enterprise Grid plans. A new data type called Smart Tags lets admins create custom fields that convert into searchable, filterable tags like “expertise,” “focus area” and “languages.” Flexible Text, another upgrade, enables profile fields to support up to 5,000 rich text characters including bullet points, links, line breaks, code blocks, emoji and more.  Image Credits: Slack “By helping people understand who their colleagues are as humans, our redesigned profiles make it easier for teammates to collaborate, feel connected and do their best work together,” Maxwell Hayman, director of product at Slack, said in a statement. |
| Why more funding equates more peace of mind for TRIPP and its users Posted: 01 Jun 2022 12:00 PM PDT LA-born startup TRIPP doesn’t want the metaverse to be a mere “shopping mall for virtual consumers,” its founder Nanea Reeves told TechCrunch. Instead, Reeves’ company is envisioning a metaverse experience that can “deepen connection to self, facilitate mental well-being and enable personal and collective transformation.” TRIPP’s vision for a mindful metaverse is already a (virtual) reality: Its wellness-centered experience can be accessed through multiple platforms and devices. This includes AR smartglasses and VR headsets, but also smartphone apps — collectively referred to as XR, or extended reality. Reeves expects mobile, AR and VR to eventually converge, “in the same way as lots of devices came together into our phones.” If this sounds a bit abstract, look no further than EvolVR, the VR meditation community whose acquisition TRIPP disclosed last February. TRIPP/EvolVR’s group meditations can be experienced live on several platforms, such as Microsoft’s AltspaceVR and Meta’s Horizon Worlds. TRIPP’s product itself offers a range of experiences, from breathing exercises and binaural audio to guided visualizations and worldscapes, some of which users can customize through TRIPP’s Composer feature. TRIPP has recently acquired another company, cross-service world-building platform Eden. “The acquisition will enable users to further customize their TRIPP experience, explore artworks and soundscapes while connecting with users from across the globe,” the company said. Reeves worked in several senior roles in the video gaming industry before founding TRIPP and is focused on creating a full experience that goes beyond watching and listening. She surrounded herself with talent that also shares this vision, including the employee who was originally working on Eden as a side project. Eden’s acquisition is funded by an $11.2 million Series A extension led by gaming-focused investment firm BITKRAFT, Reeves said. Other participants include Qualcomm, Amazon Alexa Fund, HTC and Pokémon GO maker Niantic, as well as existing investor Mayfield, which has been backing TRIPP for a while. Indeed, the firm had participated in a $4 million capital injection into the startup in 2017, before co-leading its Series A round in mid-2021 alongside Vine Ventures. The genesis of this round was a LinkedIn message from BITKRAFT, followed by an offer she couldn’t say no to, Reeves said. Talking to TechCrunch, she also emphasized how excited she was about having new investors willing to support TRIPP in broadening its reach across multiple platforms. It didn’t hurt either that they came from gaming, immersive technology and web3, as the company hopes to further engage with creators. Reeves’ decision to take this extension capital despite still having money left from its last round is also in line with a lot of the advice we have been hearing from investors lately. For instance, Y Combinator told its startups that in the current downturn, extending the runway should be a priority. TRIPP isn’t in a position where it needs to cut costs, and it is still hiring, but not at the pace it originally planned. “We do want to be cautious with the current unexpected market conditions,” Reeves said. “In the next months,” she predicted, “a lot of companies are going to have a challenging time.” In contrast, she said, TRIPP now has “a lot more cushion” and a strong team to execute on its plan. TRIPP’s focus on mental well-being in the metaverse is timely. First, because the metaverse shouldn’t be yet another place to get groped and harassed. Second, because things are looking bleak for mental health. According to the World Health Organization, the prevalence of anxiety and depression globally increased by 25% in the first year of COVID-19. Mental health is the core focus of PsyAssist, which TRIPP acquired in 2021. A standalone offering, it provides clinics and patients with tools “to support the psychological healing journey of patients undergoing psychedelic assisted therapies.” TRIPP’s main focus is more on the B2C side of things, but this too could have benefits for mental health. Its investors hope so. According to HTC VIVE vice president, Pearly Chen, TRIPP’s platform “represents an important step toward normalizing the broader discussion around technology's role in mental health.” |
| Who’s liable for AI-generated lies? Posted: 01 Jun 2022 11:15 AM PDT Who will be liable for harmful speech generated by large language models? As advanced AIs such as OpenAI’s GPT-3 are being cheered for impressive breakthroughs in natural language processing and generation — and all sorts of (productive) applications for the tech are envisaged from slicker copywriting to more capable customer service chatbots — the risks of such powerful text-generating tools inadvertently automating abuse and spreading smears can’t be ignored. Nor can the risk of bad actors intentionally weaponizing the tech to spread chaos, scale harm and watch the world burn. Indeed, OpenAI is concerned enough about the risks of its models going “totally off the rails,” as its documentation puts it at one point (in reference to a response example in which an abusive customer input is met with a very troll-esque AI reply), to offer a free content filter that “aims to detect generated text that could be sensitive or unsafe coming from the API” — and to recommend that users don’t return any generated text that the filter deems “unsafe.” (To be clear, its documentation defines “unsafe” to mean “the text contains profane language, prejudiced or hateful language, something that could be NSFW or text that portrays certain groups/people in a harmful manner.”). But, given the novel nature of the technology, there are no clear legal requirements that content filters must be applied. So OpenAI is either acting out of concern to avoid its models causing generative harms to people — and/or reputational concern — because if the technology gets associated with instant toxicity that could derail development. Just recall Microsoft’s ill-fated Tay AI Twitter chatbot — which launched back in March 2016 to plenty of fanfare, with the company’s research team calling it an experiment in “conversational understanding.” Yet it took less than a day to have its plug yanked by Microsoft after web users ‘taught’ the bot to spout racist, antisemitic and misogynistic hate tropes. So it ended up a different kind of experiment: In how online culture can conduct and amplify the worst impulses humans can have. The same sorts of bottom-feeding internet content has been sucked into today’s large language models — because AI model builders have crawled all over the internet to obtain the massive corpuses of free text they need to train and dial up their language generating capabilities. (For example, per Wikipedia, 60% of the weighted pre-training dataset for OpenAI’s GPT-3 came from a filtered version of Common Crawl — aka a free dataset comprised of scraped web data.) Which means these far more powerful large language models can, nonetheless, slip into sarcastic trolling and worse. European policymakers are barely grappling with how to regulate online harms in current contexts like algorithmically sorted social media platforms, where most of the speech can at least be traced back to a human — let alone considering how AI-powered text generation could supercharge the problem of online toxicity while creating novel quandaries around liability. And without clear liability it’s likely to be harder to prevent AI systems from being used to scale linguistic harms. Take defamation. The law is already facing challenges with responding to automatically generated content that’s simply wrong. Security research Marcus Hutchins took to TikTok a few months back to show his follows how he’s being “bullied by Google’s AI,” as he put it. In a remarkably chipper clip, considering he’s explaining a Kafka-esque nightmare in which one of the world’s most valuable companies continually publishes a defamatory suggestion about him, Hutchins explains that if you google his name the search engine results page (SERP) it returns includes an automatically generated Q&A — in which Google erroneously states that Hutchins made the WannaCry virus. Hutchins is actually famous for stopping WannaCry. Yet Google’s AI has grasped the wrong end of the stick on this not-at-all-tricky to distinguish essential difference — and, seemingly, keeps getting it wrong. Repeatedly. (Presumably because so many online articles cite Hutchins’ name in the same span of text as referencing ‘WannaCry’ — but that’s because he’s the guy who stopped the global ransomeware attack from being even worse than it was. So this is some real artificial stupidity in action by Google.) To the point where Hutchins says he’s all but given up trying to get the company to stop defaming him by fixing its misfiring AI. “The main problem that’s made this so hard is while raising enough noise on Twitter got a couple of the issues fixed, since the whole system is automated it just adds more later and it’s like playing whack-a-mole,” Hutchins told TechCrunch. “It’s got to the point where I can’t justify raising the issue anymore because I just sound like a broken record and people get annoyed.” In the months since we asked Google about this erroneous SERP the Q&A it associates with Hutchins has shifted — so instead of asking “What virus did Marcus Hutchins make?” — and surfacing a one word (incorrect) answer directly below: “WannaCry,” before offering the (correct) context in a longer snippet of text sourced from a news article, as it was in April, a search for Hutchins’ name now results in Google displaying the question “Who created WannaCry” (see screengrab below). But it now just fails to answer its own question — as the snippet of text it displays below only talks about Hutchins stopping the spread of the virus.  Image Credits: Natasha Lomas/TechCrunch (screengrab) So Google has — we must assume — tweaked how the AI displays the Q&A format for this SERP. But in doing that it’s broken the format (because the question it poses is never answered). Moreover, the misleading presentation which pairs the question “Who created WannaCry?” with a search for Hutchins’ name, could still lead a web user who quickly skims the text Google displays after the question to wrongly believe he is being named as the author of the virus. So it’s not clear it’s much/any improvement on what was being automatically generated before. In earlier remarks to TechCrunch, Hutchins also made the point that the context of the question itself, as well as the way the result gets featured by Google, can create the misleading impression he made the virus — adding: “It’s unlikely someone googling for say a school project is going to read the whole article when they feel like the answer is right there.” He also connects Google’s automatically generated text to direct, personal harm, telling us: “Ever since google started featuring these SERPs, I’ve gotten a huge spike in hate comments and even threats based on me creating WannaCry. The timing of my legal case gives the impression that the FBI suspected me but a quick [Google search] would confirm that’s not the case. Now there’s all kinds of SERP results which imply I did, confirming the searcher’s suspicious and it’s caused rather a lot of damage to me.” Asked for a response to his complaint, Google sent us this statement attributed to a spokesperson:
The tech giant did not respond to follow-up questions pointing out that its “action” keeps failing to address Hutchins’ complaint. This is of course just one example — but it looks instructive that an individual, with a relatively large online presence and platform to amplify his complaints about Google’s ‘bullying AI,’ literally cannot stop the company from applying automation technology that keeps surfacing and repeating defamatory suggestions about him. In his TikTok video, Hutchins suggests there’s no recourse for suing Google over the issue in the US — saying that’s “essentially because the AI is not legally a person no one is legally liable; it can’t be considered libel or slander.” Libel law varies depending on the country where you file a complaint. And it’s possible Hutchins would have a better chance of getting a court-ordered fix for this SERP if he filed a complaint in certain European markets such as Germany — where Google has previously been sued for defamation over autocomplete search suggestions (albeit the outcome of that legal action, by Bettina Wulff, is less clear but it appears that the claimed false autocomplete suggestions she had complained were being linked to her name by Google’s tech did get fixed) — rather than in the U.S., where Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides general immunity for platforms from liability for third-party content. Although, in the Hutchins SERP case, the question of whose content this is, exactly, is one key consideration. Google would probably argue its AI is just reflecting what others have previously published — ergo, the Q&A should be wrapped in Section 230 immunity. But it might be possible to (counter) argue that the AI’s selection and presentation of text amounts to a substantial remixing which means that speech — or, at least, context — is actually being generated by Google. So should the tech giant really enjoy protection from liability for its AI-generated textual arrangement? For large language models, it will surely get harder for model makers to dispute that their AIs are generating speech. But individual complaints and lawsuits don’t look like a scalable fix for what could, potentially, become massively scaled automated defamation (and abuse) — thanks to the increased power of these large language models and expanding access as APIs are opened up. Regulators are going to need to grapple with this issue — and with where liability lies for communications that are generated by AIs. Which means grappling with the complexity of apportioning liability, given how many entities may be involved in applying and iterating large language models, and shaping and distributing the outputs of these AI systems. In the European Union, regional lawmakers are ahead of the regulatory curve as they are currently working to hash out the details of a risk-based framework the Commission proposed last year to set rules for certain applications of artificial intelligence to try to ensure that highly scalable automation technologies are applied in a way that’s safe and non-discriminatory. But it’s not clear that the EU’s AI Act — as drafted — would offer adequate checks and balances on malicious and/or reckless applications of large language models as they are classed as general purpose AI systems that were excluded from the original Commission draft. The Act itself sets out a framework that defines a limited set of “high risk” categories of AI application, such as employment, law enforcement, biometric ID etc, where providers have the highest level of compliance requirements. But a downstream applier of a large language model’s output — who’s likely relying on an API to pipe the capability into their particular domain use case — is unlikely to have the necessary access (to training data, etc.) to be able to understand the model’s robustness or risks it might pose; or to make changes to mitigate any problems they encounter, such as by retraining the model with different datasets. Legal experts and civil society groups in Europe have raised concerns over this carve out for general purpose AIs. And over a more recent partial compromise text that’s emerged during co-legislator discussions has proposed including an article on general purpose AI systems. But, writing in Euroactiv last month, two civil society groups warned the suggested compromise would create a continued carve-out for the makers of general purpose AIs — by putting all the responsibility on deployers who make use of systems whose workings they’re not, by default, privy to. “Many data governance requirements, particularly bias monitoring, detection and correction, require access to the datasets on which AI systems are trained. These datasets, however, are in the possession of the developers and not of the user, who puts the general purpose AI system ‘into service for an intended purpose.’ For users of these systems, therefore, it simply will not be possible to fulfil these data governance requirements,” they warned. One legal expert we spoke to about this, the internet law academic Lilian Edwards — who has previously critiqued a number of limitations of the EU framework — said the proposals to introduce some requirements on providers of large, upstream general-purpose AI systems are a step forward. But she suggested enforcement looks difficult. And while she welcomed the proposal to add a requirement that providers of AI systems such as large language models must "cooperate with and provide the necessary information" to downstream deployers, per the latest compromise text, she pointed out that an exemption has also been suggested for IP rights or confidential business information/trade secrets — which risks fatally undermining the entire duty. So, TL;DR: Even Europe’s flagship framework for regulating applications of artificial intelligence still has a way to go to latch onto the cutting edge of AI — which it must do if it’s to live up to the hype as a claimed blueprint for trustworthy, respectful, human-centric AI. Otherwise a pipeline of tech-accelerated harms looks all but inevitable — providing limitless fuel for the online culture wars (spam levels of push-button trolling, abuse, hate speech, disinformation!) — and setting up a bleak future where targeted individuals and groups are left firefighting a never-ending flow of hate and lies. Which would be the opposite of fair. The EU had made much of the speed of its digital lawmaking in recent years but the bloc’s legislators must think outside the box of existing product rules when it comes to AI systems if they’re to put meaningful guardrails on rapidly evolving automation technologies and avoid loopholes that let major players keep sidestepping their societal responsibilities. No one should get a pass for automating harm — no matter where in the chain a ‘black box’ learning system sits, nor how large or small the user — else it’ll be us humans left holding a dark mirror. |
| Former OpenSea exec arrested and charged with insider trading of NFTs Posted: 01 Jun 2022 10:54 AM PDT A top former executive at the highly valued NFT startup OpenSea was arrested Wednesday and charged “with wire fraud and money laundering in connection with a scheme to commit insider trading,” according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York (SDNY). TechCrunch previously covered the firing of former OpenSea Head of Product Nate Chastain. Chastain was accused of front-running purchases of NFT collections that he knew were about to be featured prominently on the homepage of OpenSea. His actions were discovered by other NFT buyers who analyzed his transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. OpenSea soon fired Chastain after they determined the allegations were legitimate, though Chastain has continued to be active in the NFT community, especially on Twitter. The startup has noted that it didn’t have specific policies in place prohibiting this type of behavior beforehand but has since enacted new employee rules. OpenSea was most recently valued at $13.3 billion by investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm and Coatue. The Justice Department and SDNY U.S. Attorney's Office have begun getting more active in prosecuting crypto crimes, but the NFT space has largely evaded much action, which made the announcement a bit of a shock to those in the crypto space. "NFTs might be new, but this type of criminal scheme is not. As alleged, Nathaniel Chastain betrayed OpenSea by using its confidential business information to make money for himself. Today's charges demonstrate the commitment of this Office to stamping out insider trading — whether it occurs on the stock market or the blockchain," said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in the press release. We’ve reached out to OpenSea for comment. |
| Google expands program to help train the formerly incarcerated Posted: 01 Jun 2022 10:30 AM PDT Last April, Google launched Grow with Google Career Readiness for Reentry, a program created in partnership with nonprofits to offer job readiness and digital skills training for formerly incarcerated individuals. As a part of an expansion, Google today announced that it’ll invest just over $8 million in organizations helping “justice-impacted” individuals, including the formerly incarcerated, enter the workforce. Continuing its work with nonprofits including The Last Mile, Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO), Defy Ventures, Fortune Society and The Ladies of Hope Ministries, Google says that $4 million of the new roughly $8 million it’s investing will go toward Grow with Google Career Skills, aiming to help people impacted by the justice system develop career specializations. Nonprofits with which Google hasn’t previously collaborated will be able to apply for up to $100,000 in grants to “offer Google’s reentry skills training to their community.” Meanwhile, Google.org, Google’s charitable arm, will provide $4.25 million in grants to assist state governments in reducing barriers to employment with Code for America’s Clear My Record tool, which uses an open source algorithm to review records and produce clearance motions. Other grants from Google.org will focus on connecting “justice-impacted” people with jobs through the National Urban League’s Urban Tech Jobs Program and Columbia University’s Justice through Code. In an email interview with TechCrunch, Maab Ibrahim, racial and criminal justice lead at Google.org, said that it was always Google’s intention to bring the Career Readiness for Reentry program to scale. “There's a real urgency to this work — more than 640,000 people are released from prison each year in this country, and nearly all of them could benefit from the digital skills and job readiness training we’re offering through our partners,” she added. “We co-created the program with five nonprofits who have a track record of successfully developing and delivering high-quality job training to returning citizens. After implementing the program in 2021 and getting partner feedback, we saw what works really well and how we can have more impact.” The formerly incarcerated community faces many challenges, including a lack of digital skills. Inmates can go well over a decade without access to technologies like smartphones and only limited familiarity with the internet. For example, U.S. Department of Education data from 2014 showed that 62% of correctional educational programs in the country didn’t allow prisoners access to the internet. Searching for jobs or making a resume using web tools is beyond the knowledge of some former inmates. According to a recent University of Kansas study, many women coming out of prison struggle with basic skills like protecting their online privacy. This lack of literacy, too, hinders ex-prisoners’ ability to take advantage of government services, which often require online applications. Ibrahim asserts that programs like Career Readiness for Reentry can make a difference with a curriculum that’s designed to be integrated into the programming of nonprofit partners. “Given Google's technological expertise, one of our focus areas is helping people learn digital skills,” she said. “[W]e believe that companies, nonprofits and government working together can be a powerful force for good. That’s what we’re trying to facilitate here.” Studies have shown that digital literacy can reduce recidivism, or relapse into crime. But there’s some reason for skepticism. When asked how many of the 10,000 formerly incarcerated people reached by Career Readiness for Reentry programming last year found a job, Ibrahim demurred. Stymying efforts was the pandemic, which forced several of Google’s partner organizations including The Last Mile and Defy Ventures to shift from in-person to remote instruction. A Google spokesperson later told TechCrunch that, out of a survey of 400 Career Readiness for Reentry participants, 75% reported they had a job or were enrolled as a student somewhere by the end of the program. Ibrahim argues the expanded program has the potential to make a lasting impact via a new embedded team of Google.org fellows who will work with nonprofits or civic organizations to build “tech solutions.” One of their first projects is an “end-to-end” automatic record clearance service built on top of the existing Clear My Record that they’ll work with Code for America to design, pilot and implement. Google’s lofty goal is to help 100,000 formerly incarcerated people build career skills by 2025. To achieve this, the tech giant will have to facilitate a massive expansion of access to digital literacy programs across federal and state penitentiaries. Underlining the challenge, New York State offered three programs with some degree of digital literacy training that capped out at 1,400 seats combined as of March 2020. There are over 77,000 people incarcerated in New York across the state and New York City correctional systems. “Criminal records for many can be a life sentence to poverty, creating barriers to jobs, housing, education and more,” Ibrahim said. “There are so many great organizations out there doing work in this space, but we know that no one organization will reach everyone in need … As we continue to refine and evaluate this work, we hope that we will be able to scale it further in the coming years.” |
| Boundary Layer wants to steal air freight’s lunch and transport it by water instead Posted: 01 Jun 2022 10:30 AM PDT If you’ve ever spent time writing beat poetry about container ships chugging their way into and out of harbors, “nimble” or “fast” will be unlikely to make it into your finely crafted written words. And if your (admittedly increasingly esoteric) poetic bent is more of an air freight persuasion, it’s likely that “affordable” was not in your lexicon. Boundary Layer is working on a series of electrically propulsed hydrofoiling vessels and wants to rewrite the book of transportation-focused verse, one stanza at a time, with nimble, fast-to-load, container-ship standard high-speed shipping vessels, with the goal of halving the cost of traditional air freight, at comparable speeds. The company raised $4.8 million from Lower Carbon Capital, Fifty Years and Soma Capital, and already has $90 million in pre-orders from ferry operators for their 220-seat electric passenger vessels. The passenger ships are but a launchpad before the company goes after its real goal: the freight market. I spoke with Boundary Layer’s CEO and founder, Ed Kearney, who told me that these early vessels are a launchpad to enter the $100 billion air freight market with a high-speed hydrogen-powered container ship. “We applied to Y Combinator and were accepted. We told the partners in the interview that if we were accepted into Y Combinator, we would come to the Bay Area, and we’d build a hydrofoil container ship that carries one container,” says Kearney. The Y Combinator team called bullshit, he tells me. The team rolled up their sleeves and got to work. “We turned up with some hand tools in our luggage, no workshop, nowhere to live, and started building. Ten weeks later, we managed to build this hydrofoil. We spent $150,000 on it, which happened to be exactly the amount of money that YC gives you. We parked out in front of the demo day facility and it made a bit of an impact.” It’s easy to see how; the company’s prototype ship — and the video it produced to show it off — looks pretty slick: The challenge with hydrofoiling, of course, is that you need a fair bit of energy to get the ship’s hull out of the water — and that’s harder the heavier the ship gets. The world’s largest cargo ships can transport some 24,000 containers in one go. Needless to say, those behemoths aren’t going to casually lift their hulls out of the water — but that’s also not what the company is competing with. “The physics [of hydrofoiling] is very similar to that of an aircraft. The amount of the lift-to-drag ratio that you get with modern materials on a hydrofoil wing these days are about the same as what you can get from a traditional airplane. So the amount of power you need to make a vehicle have the same amount of mass takeoff is also kind of comparable. Also the amount of thrust you need scales with speed,” Kearney explains. “An aircraft travels at 500 knots — we travel 40 — but they still need 12 times more power. In a nutshell, the way we solved it was by taking a smaller vessel, you get very weight-conscious, and you need a large amount of power. That means we need big fuel cells and batteries.” The company’s vision is not to replace conventional ocean freight, the freight rates — that would be madness; the price of ocean freight is incredibly low, which is why around 90% of all goods consumed in the world are shipped this way. The company tells me that the local trucking — which takes the container the last few hundred miles of its journey — can be more expensive than the 6,000-mile ocean journey. “We will be making container ships, but we’re not competing with container ships. We are replacing air freight. Think of components and other goods they are shipping by air freight. They are already paying very high freight rates of $2-3 per kilogram,” Kearney explains. “Inter Asia is the most exciting market for us, because it’s the biggest market in terms of air freight. Those customers already have very high-value goods that need to move quickly and we’re able to offer them an alternative to air freight that’s half the price and comparable transit times.”  The battery pack on Boundary Layer’s prototype clocks in at 95 KWh and 415 Volts — very similar to what you might find in a high-end performance electric car (the Tesla Model 3 Performance packs an 82 kWh 350 V lithium-ion pack, for example). Image Credits: Boundary Layer Of course, a plane is going to out-fly a ship cruising at sea every day of the week, but Boundary Layer believes that high speed and the use of standard containers makes it competitive. The crux of the matter is that containerized transportation can make shipping an order of magnitude more efficient. A manufacturer in Taiwan can fill a 20- or 40-foot container with whatever they need to ship, put it on a truck, move it to one of Boundary Layer’s high-speed container ships, then put it on a truck in North Korea and have it delivered to the assembly plant. All of this can happen without unloading and re-loading the container — which can be locked and sealed for the whole journey. When shipping by air, even if the goods are on pallets, the company claims there are significant inefficiencies. If you really want to nerd out about why containerized commerce is such a benefit, there’s an incredible eight-part podcast series that’ll have you transfixed for a few hours. One for the transportation nerds. Anyway — back to Boundary Layer… “We’ve got three Fortune 500 companies as launch partners — one is in the electronics space, one in the automotive supply and one is in the electronic equipment space,” claims Kearney, who declined to name the companies for now, but claims those three partners have $26 million worth of letters of intent (LOI), and an additional $60 million in pre-orders for the passenger ferries, spanning the world: “The passenger ferry customers will be announced soon, but they’re all over the world, including the Mediterranean, the US, as well as the Caribbean” Boundary Layer created a video to show off its passenger ferry: The company makes a big deal out of its vehicles being zero-emission. “All our vessels will be zero-emissions, and propulsion ultimately comes from electric motors. The passenger ferry will just have lithium-ion batteries powering the electric system,” says Kearney. “For the container ship, we need to have a range of 1,500 nautical miles. Batteries only really get you to about 100 nautical miles, so for cargo, we are doing liquid hydrogen. That will even get us to 10,000 nautical miles if you wanted to have very large tanks. The electric system between the passenger ferry and the cargo ship will be identical. What differs is where the electrical power comes from.” |
| The US is about to get serious about EVs Posted: 01 Jun 2022 10:30 AM PDT For most of the last decade, Americans largely ignored electric vehicles. Some brands sold decent numbers, like the Chevy Bolt or Nissan Leaf, but they were largely targeted at thrifty commuters or EV diehards. Others, like the Ford Focus Electric, were intended only to comply with laws that mandated a small number of EV sales. Still others, like the early Tesla models, were desirable but out of reach for most people. In the last couple of years, though, automakers have dropped their resistance and consumers have likewise let go of their indifference. New technology adoption often follows an S-curve, where people are slow to embrace it at first but then rush in once a tipping point is reached. EVs appear to be at that inflection point today: Car buyers snapped up nearly twice as many plug-in vehicles last year as they did the year before. The sudden surge has observers wondering whether the pace can be maintained, especially in the U.S. Their concern isn't misplaced: Apart from Tesla's factories, the U.S. doesn't have significant EV or battery manufacturing infrastructure, at least not yet. And in terms of publicly available chargers, we have fewer per road-going EV than any country but Norway, where the public's sudden embrace of EVs has led to a wave of new registrations, according to a recent International Energy Agency report.
Innovation may help position U.S. battery makers to be more independent of Chinese supply chains, an agenda that's been top of mind for many manufacturers. The U.S. may seem behind, but is it hopelessly so? Can the country pull a rabbit out of the hat? It's happened before, of course. The U.S. didn't invent the automobile — that honor goes to Germany's Karl Benz — but it did produce the Model T, which helped the country take the lead in the adoption of the automobile. Neither was the Interstate Highway System the first controlled-access highway network, but today it's far more extensive than the Autobahn, and until a decade ago, was the most extensive in the world. The trend holds outside transportation, too — Americans didn't embrace mobile phones at first, but subscription rates continue to grow domestically while they've plateaued or dropped in more zealous countries. It's not guaranteed, but there are plenty of reasons why the U.S. has a good chance of catching up in the race. And if it does, it’ll mean plenty of opportunities for investors, especially on the infrastructure side. |
| Plenty of opportunities for students at TC Sessions: Climate Posted: 01 Jun 2022 10:26 AM PDT Calling all climate-change warriors! If you're determined to join the new wave of entrepreneurs fighting the climate crisis, don't miss TC Sessions: Climate on June 14 in Berkeley, California with an online day on June 16. Hear from and engage with some of the climate world's leading scientists, researchers, founders, CEOs, investors and iconic leaders — including Bill Gates. This one-day deep dive offers plenty of benefits for students.
Basically, we're saying that for $45, you can set your climate career aspirations on a faster, sustainable track — and help humanity in the process. Everybody wins. TC Sessions: Climate takes place on June 14 in Berkeley, California with an online day on June 16. Buy your student pass today. Who knows? You might score a terrific internship or even win a ticket to Disrupt 2022, plus a hotel for three nights. What are you waiting for? Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions Climate 2022? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.
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| Dear Sophie: How do we qualify for each of the O-1A criteria? Posted: 01 Jun 2022 10:06 AM PDT Here’s another edition of "Dear Sophie," the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies. "Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams," says Sophie Alcorn, a Silicon Valley immigration attorney. "Whether you're in people ops, a founder or seeking a job in Silicon Valley, I would love to answer your questions in my next column." TechCrunch+ members receive access to weekly "Dear Sophie" columns; use promo code ALCORN to purchase a one- or two-year subscription for 50% off. Dear Sophie, Our startup will be sponsoring my co-founders and me for O-1A visas. How do we qualify for each of the O-1A criteria? — Extraordinary Entrepreneur Dear Extraordinary, What an exciting journey for you and your co-founders — the O-1A is a great option to enable you to grow your startup and take control of your geographical destiny. Earlier this year, immigration officials clarified and expanded the types of evidence that meet the requirements for the O-1A extraordinary ability visa, making it more accessible for individuals to qualify. As always, I recommend that you consult with an immigration attorney who can help you and your co-founders devise an immigration strategy and backup plans, if needed. To qualify for an O-1A, an individual must either have received a major international award, such as a Nobel Prize, or meet at least three of the following eight criteria. Strong cases typically meet four or more of these criteria, backed by extensive letters of recommendation as well as other documentary evidence: Taking the prizeNationally or internationally recognized awardsYou must demonstrate that you've received nationally or internationally recognized awards — typically two or more — for excellence in your field. In January 2022, the Biden administration announced new efforts to attract and retain STEM talent in the United States. That prompted immigration officials to expand the achievements that qualify as nationally or internationally recognized awards for the O-1A. Here are a few examples of what can now qualify as an award for excellence:
Exclusive membershipInvitation to join a group or association that demands outstanding achievementsThis criterion requires you to show you've been invited to join a group or association that demands outstanding achievements of its members and is judged by recognized experts. This cannot be a membership that is only based on the payment of a fee or subscription to join, or one based on the level of education or the years of experience in a field or is a requirement for employment, such as union membership.  Image Credits: Joanna Buniak / Sophie Alcorn (opens in a new window) Some examples that will serve to strengthen your O-1A application include:
It is important to note that the group, organization or association you join or work with must relate to your field of expertise. |
| Report shows that Safari reaches one billion worldwide users, still behind Google Chrome Posted: 01 Jun 2022 09:21 AM PDT Based on a recent report, Apple's Safari finally hit one billion users, becoming the second browser to hit the milestone, next to Google Chrome, which still shines brighter in popularity. According to Atlas VPN, 1,006,232,879 internet users (19.16% of all internet users) currently use the Safari browser. Meanwhile, Google Chrome has three times more, with a whopping 3,378,967,819 users. Microsoft Edge sits in third place with about 212,695,000 users. Atlas VPN’s findings are based on the GlobalStats browser market share percentage, which was converted into numbers using the Internet World Stats internet user metric to retrieve the precise numbers. Its report seems to suggest that Safari’s growth could be related to the browser’s adoption of privacy and security features, but it’s likely more a reflection of mobile marketshare where Safari and Chrome come installed on Apple and Android devices.  Image Credits: Atlas VPN Apple's web browser is automatically installed on every Apple device, while Chrome is installed with most versions of Android. This helps to give both tech behemoths a leg up in the competition. And while Microsoft ships its Edge browser with Windows, it lost out on the mobile market due to the Windows Phone’s failure. That said, Apple has introduced several new privacy features to the browser over the past year that could help attract users. The browser's new privacy report, for example, shows how many and which cross-site trackers Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) stopped from accessing your information. Chrome is often considered a more attractive browser, however, with web applications such as YouTube, Drive, Calendar, Docs, Earth and Maps, among others. Just last week, Google rolled out a new way to use Google Lens on the desktop, allowing Chrome browser users on desktop to search any image on a web page with Google Lens. In April, a new "multisearch" feature via Google Lens was launched on the Google mobile app as well. Additionally, Version 100 of Google Chrome launched in late March, and Chrome on Android became 15% faster. Other browsers in the report included Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Samsung Internet and Opera. As noted, Microsoft Edge was the third most popular browser with over 212 million users, overtaking Firefox, which has 179 million internet users. Since the release of Windows 11, Microsoft Edge became the default browser on all devices and, in turn, received a big increase in its user base. Firefox browser is oriented toward more privacy-concerned users as it offers protection features like security against tracking, pop-up blocking malware and phishing. Mozilla launched version 100 of the browser at the beginning of May. Fifth on the list was the Samsung Internet browser, which is used by more than 149 million users. Last is the Opera browser, with more than 108 million users. Not only can people utilize Opera for everyday tasks, but it also has a Crypto Browser and app with a built-in crypto wallet that supports Ethereum, Polygon and Celo blockchain technology. |
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