Month: July 2018

WeWork rivals are in the money this year. India’s biggest rival to the U.S. co-working giant, a Mumbai-headquartered startup called Awfis, announced that it has raised $20 million in new capital for expansion. The news comes just after Hong Kong-based Campfire pulled in $18 million.

Awfis raised its new funds, which are a Series C round, from Sequoia India, Innoven Capital — the fund connected with Singapore sovereign fund Temasek — and TTS:IO, The Three Sisters, a family fund run by the three daughters of banking billionaire Rana Kapoor.

TTS:IO jointly incubated the project in 2015, while Sequoia India led its $20 Series B round last year.

CEO Amit Ramani stressed that his company is taking a different route to WeWork, which entered India last year and currently has eight locations. Awfis claims 55 centers which house 25,000 seats — it says it has a membership base of 15,000. The startup is aiming to scale to 90-100 centers and 40,000 seats over the next year.

“We had a big headstart and we have a massive lead right now,” Ramani told TechCrunch. “We’re really very different [to WeWork] from a commercial real estate perspective and we have built knowledge of micro-markets across India and are expanding beyond CBDs in our cities and into new locations.”

While WeWork shoots for a premium offering for startups, Ramani said Awfis is happy taking a more value-focused approach and also looking to the meat of the market, SMEs and corporates. Awfis has its halo-style locations, but the company is opening to turning any vacant real estate into co-working. Case in point, it has taken over unused retail space in malls and even one floor of a hotel while it offers traditional-style office rentals to some customers.

It also adopts a more collaborative approach with land-owners. While we work offers ‘Powered By We’ — a service that redesigns existing office space for companies — Awfis takes a pragmatic approach to selecting space.

“It’s more of a JV. We run the whole show but the space owner brings in the capex and there’s no minimum guarantee but they take a percentage of profits,” Ramani explained.

Right now, he said, around 55 percent of Awfis’ capacity is managed, but he intends to raise that figure to 60 percent.

Aside from that, he said also that Awfis reaches more enterprise and SME driven customers who he believes appreciate the focus on value. In some cases, he said, expansion into new cities is preempted by a request from an existing customer, while Awfis offers a service for SMEs that effectively gives them their own office within a designated “co-working space.”

“We can set up head offices and customize our product for them with personalized space and services,” Ramani explained.

As a capital intensive market, Ramani said fundraising will be “very regular,” with this next round likely to come in seven to eight months. WeWork has bought up competitors in Greater China (Naked Hub) and Southeast Asia (Spacemob) to grow its footprint in Asia, but so far it hasn’t been in touch with Awfis, its CEO said. He’s not expecting a call, however, as he believes there’s enough room for “four to five” companies operating at scale in India.

“The market is huge and there’s a place for multiple players to exist. [WeWork] are bit more premier range and we are more value driven, but we’re betting on that for a much larger market share.”

Spotify is racing to sign up users before Apple Music can, even at the expense of its finances. Spotify’s second quarter as a public company saw mixed performance compared to estimate as it reached 83 million paid subscribers, up 40 percent year-over-year and up 8 million from its 75 million count last quarter. Spotify now has 180 million total users, coming in at the high end of its guidance with a 5.9 percent quarter-over-quarter growth rate, though it added fewer users than last quarter.

But Spotify saw trouble with its finances. The company had €1.27 billion ($1.49 billion) in revenue, up 26 percent year-over-year and in line with estimates, but it missed big on EPS where it saw a loss of -€2.20 compared to estimates of -€0.68. Spotify saw a net loss of €394 million and operating loss of €91 million this quarter, showing it’s still a ways off from becoming profitable under the heavy strain of its high royalty payments to record labels and artists. Spotify shares were down about 0.8 percent in pre-trading hours.

For comparison, Apple Music has 40 million subscribers, though is rumored to now possibly have more in the US than Spotify. Spotify now says it has 31 percent of its subscribers, or 25 million in North America as a whole.

Forecasts for Q3 see the company expecting 188 to 193 million users and 85 million 88 million paid subscribers, with €1.2 billion to €1.4 billion in revenue. During the earnings call, CEO Daniel Ek explained that it’s not a record label, “nor do we have any interest in becoming a label”, dispelling myths that it was becoming one because it licensed music directly from artists who own their own rights. Ek said these deals were not exclusive.

Instead, Ek said that Spotify’s strategy to grow its margin beyond what’s allowed by its royalty rates is to grow the number of creators on its platform, the number of creators that use its audience management and promotion tools, and the number of creators that pay for those tools. Essentially, Spotify has to use its massive audience across paid and ad-supported tiers to lure artists to pay it for help reaching them instead of the other way around.

As for podcasts, where Spotify may not have to pay as much to creators, Ek said “it’s growing really, really fast” but that that it was unclear exactly how big the opportunity is long-term.

Spotify’s average revenue per user also dropped 12 percent this quarter. because it used promotions like a $13 bundled subscription with Hulu to attract more subscribers. Still, that could be a smart bet for Spotify long-term. Music isn’t going anywhere, so whichever streaming service can lock in subscribers now by gathering personalization data and getting them to build playlists could earn monthly fees from them long into the future.

Based on the many, many Galaxy Note 9 leaks we’ve seen in the past few weeks and months, it seems like a pretty safe bet that the upcoming phablet won’t look all that different from its predecessors. The phablet does, however, appear to have a lot going under the hood.

The most recent piece of news hinted at a massive 4,000 mAh battery — marking a 700 mAh jump over its predecessor. That’s some pretty rarified on-board battery air right there. The first in a series of quick video spots for the handset does appear to confirm an increased capacity, without going into any specifics. And, naturally, it takes Apple to task in the process. That’s just Samsung’s M.O. these days. 

A sizable jump in battery is notable for one key reason, of course. Samsung’s been pretty cautious on that front ever since all of those Note 7s started exploding a few years back. The company apologized profusely, before instituting a bunch of new safety mechanisms in the process. Since then, it hasn’t…played with fire, so to speak.

From the looks of it, however, the company’s August 9 event could change all of that.

Snap40, a Scottish startup that has developed an AI-enabled wearable device to help health professionals monitor patients either on the hospital ward or at home, has raised $8 million in seed funding. The round is led by ADV, with participation from MMC Ventures, and brings total funding to $10 million.

Originally launched as a clinical pilot in August 2016, the Snap40 hardware and software platform initially set out to enable hospitals to monitor patients whose health is at risk of rapidly deteriorating while on ward, but has since expanded to increasingly focus on what happens after a patient is discharged, in addition to monitoring clinical trials.

Claiming to have the same accuracy as ICU monitoring, the wearable device captures oxygen saturation, respiration rate, pulse rate, temperature, movement and posture. In addition to onboard sensors, the Snap40 platform offers integrations with other devices e.g. a BP cuff, weighing scales, a glucose monitor. It then feeds this real-time data to the cloud where it is analysed by the company’s proprietary algorithms to identify if a patient’s health is at risk and alert a physician proactively.

In a call with Snap40 co-founder and CEO Christopher McCann he explained that where a patient has left hospital after an acute illness or has a long-term health condition, this can ultimately help to reduce hospital re-admission. In more extreme cases, it can also directly save lives.

Let’s take cardiac arrest, for example. McCann cites a report published by the U.K. National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD) in 2012 that found physiological instability (e.g. elevation of respiration rate or a decrease in blood pressure) was present six hours prior to arrest in 62 percent of patients and twelve hours prior to arrest in 47 percent. Conversely, that instability had not been picked up on in 36 percent of cases where earlier recognition could have improved outcomes.

As another example, Sepsis, which McCann says is the number one cause of hospital readmission in the U.S., can be detected via an elevation in temperature, respiration rate or pulse rate and a drop in blood pressure or oxygen saturation. But in about 95 percent of patients in hospital, those measurements are only collected every 4 or 8 hours. And once the patient goes home, they are never collected.

“We give the physician access to both real-time and historical, trending data for the patient all on their mobile phone,” McCann says. “We wanted to create an experience where they could pull their phone out of their pocket and instantly pull up everything on a patient and allow them to see both acute changes e.g. now and long-term chronic changes over time”.

One interesting aspect of the Snap40 device is that it captures the rawest data possible (ie the actual waveforms), leaving the conversion of this data into tangible vital signs, such as respiration or pulse rate, to the company’s own software and machine learning models running in the cloud. This means that vital sign generation is easily upgradable as it is further refined and new correlations are derived from the large amount of historical data the company is amassing.

“We use non-invasive sensors to monitor the patient, transmitting the raw signal waveforms to our cloud platform, all of which we store for analysis,” says McCann. “We then use vital-sign specific machine learning models to generate each vital sign. Because we have the raw signal waveforms, this also means we can build and train new models and release new vital signs as software updates — this is quite like the Tesla model where they ship new software updates to their car that lets the car go faster”.

While Snap40’s use of machine learning/AI is currently limited to automating existing, repeatable well-defined tasks (e.g. the robust collection and generation of vital signs), moving forward the company wants to use AI to do things that aren’t humanly possible. For example, it is using historical data to build models that can predict patient deterioration based on what’s happened before across many thousands of patients.

McCann says the company is excited by the idea of being able to predict the likelihood of someone with lung disease developing an acute exacerbation of their condition. “If we can do this, with high sensitivity/specificity, then we can wrap this into a digital therapeutic, otherwise known as software as a drug… This is a whole new challenge, from a regulatory, technological and societal perspective”.

(A “digital therapeutic” is defined as software that is scientifically proven to provide some kind of positive change in someone’s health condition, either by seeking to modify the patient’s behaviour e.g. more exercise or more rest etc., or direct some other call to action, such as using a conventional device or drug in a specific way to elicit a measurable change.)

Meanwhile, Snap40 plans to use the new funding to more than double its headcount by the end of 2018, hiring in all areas of the business. The company has an office in New York and its headquarters are in Edinburgh, Scotland. Its target customer is mainly healthcare providers in the U.S., although the startup also works with NHS Trusts in England.

A two-day taxi driver strike in Barcelona this week, called to protest against the number of ride-hailing vehicles on the streets and failure to enforce national regulations that are supposed to cap private hire vehicle numbers, turned violent yesterday with protestors attacking cars and local media reporting attacks on drivers too.

The violence has led to a temporary suspension of all vehicle for hire services (VTC) in the city — thereby also including Uber and Cabify, both of which only run licensed driver services in the country.

Local newspaper La Vanguardia reports that drivers and even passengers were attacked during protests yesterday.

An Uber spokesman confirmed that some of its drivers had been attacked by protestors, telling us: “Rider and driver safety is our top priority. As a result of yesterday’s serious attacks the apps for professional licensed drivers have collectively decided to temporarily pause operations in Barcelona.”

A Cabify representative confirmed its service remains suspended in Barcelona. It also condemned how its drivers were being “daily intimidated for simply exercising their right to work”.

“We firmly reject the hostile and violent environment that unwound yesterday in the city of Barcelona. Cabify respects any company or professional group’s right to strike as well as it respects the right of those who wish to continue to develop their activity under normal terms, whether they are taxi or VTC drivers,” it told us in a statement.

“We consider that the citizens and visitors of the city of Barcelona, which at this time of the year is at its peak season, have the right to move through the city and enjoy quality minimum services as well as other urban transportation alternatives they may need or desire.”

Taxi drivers are angry that the supposed national ratio of one professionally licensed vehicle for hire (VTC) per thirty taxis is not being upheld. The ride-hailing giants have been buying up licenses from other operators to ramp up their presence.

At the same time city authorities have been attempting to enforce the ratio via local regulation — which the VTC sector has challenged in the courts.

Unauto VTC, a local association which represents the interests of the vehicle for hire sector, recently brought a challenge against an attempt by city authorities to impose its own VTC regulations — and succeeded in getting it suspended by the High Court over the potential impact on drivers and citizens.

In a statement announcing the VTC service suspension yesterday and condemning the violence, Unauto VTC says the taxi drivers were protesting that court decision.

Although taxi drivers responding to the association’s Twitter account accused the body of cherry picking the laws it supports and ignoring those it does not.

The nationwide situation in Spain is that VTC licenses have been capped at a 1:30 ratio since 2015 but the cap faces legal challenges and is seemingly not being actively enforced — thereby allowing ride-hailing companies to circumvent it by buying up licenses from other operators.

At the same time, Spain’s Competition Authority has been pushing for gradual deregulation of the sector. While taxi associations have been pushing back with strikes and protests — the latest of which has seen drivers attacked and cars smashed and sprayed with paint stripper.

According to La Vanguardia, Unauto VTC’s president, Eduardo Martin, said he had seen evidence of “two serious assaults” during protests in Barcelona yesterday where the victims had to be taken to hospital.

“A driver has been burned with acid on his face, with which they use to burn the paint of the vehicles, and another has been beaten and has been transferred unconscious to the hospital,” he told the newspaper.

The mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, who has driven the city’s attempt to regulate the VTC sector to protect the taxi industry, condemned the violence in a tweet — writing that while everyone supports the taxi sector no one supports the violent acts seen on the streets of the city yesterday.

Her tweet linked to a video showing a group of protestors violently attacking a Cabify car which is said to have contained a French family. La Vanguardia’s report contains similar images of violent protest.

In its statement, Unauto VTC said it made the decision to temporarily suspend private hire vehicle services in Barcelona in light of the level of violence perpetrated by what it described as “radical groups”.

“Despite having experienced episodes of violence on other occasions, the gravity of various attacks suffered this morning in Barcelona obliges the sector, including Uber and Cabify, to temporarily suspend activity in Barcelona until the situation returns to normal,” it writes.

It goes on to express “total support for all drivers attacked today in Barcelona and thousands of drivers throughout Spain”, and to apologize to “the thousands of passengers who trust us to move around Barcelona every day”, adding: “We will work with the authorities so that the perpetrators are arrested and tried.

“We ask for the protection of the institutions and state security forces to put an end to this situation and protect the thousands of workers in the VTC sector, who are not only denied their right to work but also see their physical integrity increasingly threatened.”

A local taxi association, Elite Taxi BCN, also put out its own communique yesterday — condemning the violence and appealing for calm.

In the statement it writes that the images of taxi drivers fighting in the streets will only harm the sector, and goes on to call for peaceful protest.

“They are not going to shut us up in any way, we are not going to accept this corrupt situation which we will not refer to in any other way. Our fight is and will be focused on the courts to get to the end of this rot… no matter how much it costs us,” it writes. “We ask for peace and calm and maximum respect — especially for the people.”

Uber only returned to Barcelona in March — buying its way into the VTC sector by shelling out to buy licenses from an existing operator. The company began with 130 drivers but will not disclose how many are now operating in the city.

The company does not operate its p2p non-professional driver service in Barcelona. Nor in Madrid, where it also operates in Spain. Nor indeed in the vast majority of Europe where it says it operates under existing transportation laws, i.e. using only licensed drivers.

Barcelona taxi associations have a long history of fighting Uber. It was a legal challenge lodged in the city against the company’s unlicensed p2p services that went all the way up to Europe’s top court — where judges last year ruled that Uber is a transportation company not a tech platform, thereby outlawing its earlier expansionist playbook of taxi law circumvention.

The CJEU decision has locked in the strategic gear change Uber has made in Europe in recent years, in the face of a series of (at times violent) protests — focusing on lobbying national and city regulators to liberalize and reform taxi rules in its favor.

This month, for example, it relaunched a service in Finland after suspending operations last year to wait for reforms to be passed.

For its part, Cabify, a Spanish ride-hailing startup which also operates in Latin America, argues that “the taxi is not our competitor” — saying its founding mission has been “to replace the use of the private vehicle as a means of transportation inside the city”.

“More than 50% of the commutes done within the city are made by private cars and the only victory we aim to is to reduce that percentage as far as possible,” it told us. “If we reach that goal, this could represent the increase of demand for alternative mobility services such as ours and taxi’s, being a common goal that would benefit us all.”

Commenting on the VTC regulation that’s been proposed by the city of Barcelona (but blocked by the court), it called for joint working between all the stakeholders to modernize laws without undermining protections.

“We believe that unilateral solutions are not the right solutions to build the mobility of the future and that all players must work together with the administration in order to find the way to ensure the market’s evolution and the protection of all of those who operate in it,” it said.

“Thus, we believe that the final consumer, as one of the most affected parties in the present and futures decision regarding the sector, deserves to be heard and contemplated in all analyses. Cabify counts with more than 3 million users in Spain whom have found usefulness in the service we provide through our app,
which they’ve rated as 4.77/5.”

But Cabify has also been taking a leaf out of Uber’s old playbook by emailing its user-base to mobilize them to lobby online on its behalf — using the hashtag #HaciaDóndeNosMovemos

There’s no official word on when VTC services will resume in the city — but it seems likely the industry suspension will be lifted once the taxi strike concludes tomorrow evening, if not before.

Korean electronics giant LG is soaring to new heights, but its mobile division continues to lag well behind the rest of the company and the signs aren’t promising.

LG’s latest financials released today recorded another quarter of success with operating profit jumping 16 percent year-on-year to hit KRW 771 billion ($715.1 million) as overall sales rose 3.2 percent across the group. LG said its sales and profit for the first half of 2018 are at all-time highs but — and you knew a but was coming… — its smartphone division remains a significant loss-maker.

The company’s mobile and communications division — which houses LG Mobile — posted yet another quarter in the red. Sales of KRW 2.07 trillion ($1.92 billion) represented an annual drop of 23 percent, while the division carded an operating loss of KRW 185.4 billion, or $171.95 million.

That’s compared to a quarterly profit of KRW 407 billion ($377.48 million) for LG’s home entertainment business and a KRW 457.2 billion ($424.04 million) profit for its home appliance unit, which are LG’s two stand-out business units.

There’s nothing new here, losses are commonplace for LG Mobile.

It hasn’t been break-even or profitable since 2014. Those losses have been cut by some degree since the company shook up the division with new leadership in November 2017, but there’s plenty to worry about with sales dipping noticeably over the past two quarters of business.

This time around in Q2, LG put its mobile losses down to “the slowing growth of the global smartphone market and a decline in mid- to low-end smartphone sales in Latin America.” While it claimed that the size of the operating loss was down to investments in sales and marketing ahead of the release of its next flagship devices.

There’s a hint a reorganization — perhaps even layoffs — as the company added that it would “seek to further improve its business structure” as it aims prepares to push its LG G7 ThinQ and LG V35 ThinQ devices worldwide and get ready for those new launches.

More changes are on their way, you’d imagine, as LG is surely looking for a way to stem the bleeding but also retain a mobile business has certainly been iconic despite its struggles in recent times. Perhaps the answer is a downsizing in a similar style to Sony in 2016. Back then, the Japanese firm was losing even more than LG is per quarter but it began to be more strategic with its new device launches and target sales markets. The end result of that strategy was an end to the big losses and a more sustainable mobile business.

“Augmented reality for enterprise” is the sort of phrase that surely hits all of the right neurological pleasure centers for VCs. No surprise, then, that Scandit just raised a $30 million Series B, in a round led by GV (née Google Ventures) and NGP Capital. That joins a previous $13 million raise for the Zurich-based startup.

We highlighted the company back in early 2017. At the time, its mission was focused on focused on weaning enterprises off of pricey proprietary scanning hardware — instead, its technology leveraged standard smartphones with custom software on top. AR has also always been a key part of the Scandit picture.

The company has focused on the Microsoft Hololens and other wearable displays as ways to help streamline warehouses. “A number of data capture use cases for HoloLens come to mind,” the company wrote in a 2016 blog post. “For example, a warehouse associate with a HoloLens headset could be directed with virtual markers to the correct items. They could then use the built-in HoloLens camera for hands-free scanning. HoloLens could also indicate where an item should be placed once it is scanned, or deliver additional information about scanned objects.”

This latest round will go toward growing the company globally and introducing its technology across various mobile platforms or “any camera-equipped device,” as it puts it in a press release tied to the news.

“This new funding will enable us to keep up our rapid growth, but also, looking at the bigger picture,” says CEO Samuel Mueller, “it’s going to increase the overall adoption of mobile computer vision and augmented reality in the enterprise, which will help to streamline operations and lead to cost savings.”

Kenya based Sokowatch aims to shake up the supply chain market for Africa’s informal retailers.

The B2B e-commerce company closed a $2 million seed investment led by 4DX Ventures. Others to join the round were Village Global, Lynett Capital, Golden Palm Investments, and Outlierz  Ventures.

Sokowatch’s platform connects Africa’s informal retail stores directly to local and multinational suppliers—such as Unilever and Proctor and Gamble—by digitizing orders, delivery, and payments with the aim of reducing costs and increasing profit margins.

The term disrupt is used less frequently in African tech since startups are often entering new business spaces where there’s little to actually disrupt.

That’s not the case with Sokowatch, which sees price and productivity benefits to revamping existing supply chain structures for Africa’s informal retailers.

“With both manufacturers and the small shops, we’re becoming the connective layer between them, where previously you had multiple layers of middle-men from distributors, sub-distributors, to wholesalers,” Sokowatch founder and CEO Daniel Yu told TechCrunch.

“The cost of sourcing goods right now…we estimate we’re cutting that cost by about 20 percent [for] these shopkeepers,” he said

Quantifying the size and potential of Africa’s informal markets has captured the attention of economists and startups. GDP revisions in several African countries have revealed outdated statistical methods were missing billions of dollars in economic activity. And one estimate by The International Labor Organization places up to two-thirds of Sub-Saharan Africa’s non-agricultural employment in the informal economy.

On the number of small shops on the continent, Yu noted a lack of reliable numbers but cited a 2016 KPMG study pegging fast moving consumer goods spending in Nigeria alone at $41 billion annually. A portion of those goods move through the continent’s vast network of roadside markets, shops, and stands.

“There are millions of informal stores across Africa’s cities selling hundreds of billions worth of consumer goods every year,” said Yu.

These stores can use Sokowatch’s app on mobile phones to buy wares directly from large suppliers, arrange for transport, and make payments online. “Ordering on SMS or Android gets you free delivery of products to your store, on average, in about two hours,” said Yu.

Sokowatch generates revenues by earning “a margin on the goods that we’re selling to shopkeepers,” said Yu. On the supplier side, they also benefit from “aggregating demand…and getting bulk deals on the products that we distribute.”

The startup has delivered 100,000 orders to customers for “a few thousands shops,” according to Yu and company data.

The company recently launched a line of credit product to extend working capital loans to platform clients. With the $2 million round, Sokowatch—which currently operates in Kenya and Tanzania—plans to “expand to new markets in East Africa, as well as pilot additional value add services to the shops,” said Yu.

Peter Orth, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at lead investor 4DX Ventures, will join Sokowatch’s board of directors.

Yu also noted the possible big data benefits to informal African retail from Sokowatch. “If you are …selling into this market you have no clue who ultimately ends up with your product, even two layers down. That’s a big challenge,” he said.

“With us, not only do we know who’s buying the product, we know when they are buying the product, what they’re buying it in conjunction with, and the pricing.”

Here’s a timely reminder for all the European startup fans around the world. TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin 2018 takes place on November 29-30 — that’s just four short months away. But our super early-bird ticket pricing won’t last nearly that long. Right now, the pricing tiers start at €595 + VAT, but next week the prices go up. “That’s OK, I love spending money unnecessarily” — said no one ever. Save some euros and buy your pass here today.

Disrupt events always offer outstanding content, which includes interviews with top founders, VCs, tech titans and rising stars — and Disrupt Berlin 2018 won’t be the exception to that rule. Interested in European fintech? Of course, you are. We’re thrilled to count Anne Boden, the founder and CEO of Starling Bank, among our many excellent speakers.

If you’re interested in investors (and what early-startup founder isn’t), you won’t want to miss it when four partners from VC firm Accel — Philippe Botteri, Sonali De Rycker, Luciana Lixandru and Harry Nelis — conduct a partner meeting on our stage. Well not literally, but you can bet they’ll have a lot to say about the current state of startup investments.

We’re finalizing our speaker lineup, which means we’re still accepting nominations. If you have someone in mind, hit us up with your submission right here.

Disrupt isn’t a proper Disrupt without a Startup Battlefield. We’ve been holding these startup-pitch competitions for 12 years now, and our alumni community of more than 750 companies has gone on to collectively raise $8 billion in funding and produce 100 exits. Think your early-stage startup has the right stuff? We want to hear from you, so submit your application here and take a shot at winning $50,000 in non-equity cash along with intense love from investors and the media. Your business may just be the next unicorn, and it won’t cost you anything to participate in this potentially life-changing competition.

Disrupt Berlin offers plenty of ways to get your startup in front of investors, media, potential customers and future collaborators. One of the best ways to do that is to demo alongside hundreds of other amazing pre-Series A companies in Startup Alley, our exhibition floor — a breeding ground for opportunity. Don’t just take our word for it. Vlad Larin, a co-founder of Zeroqode, had this to say about his experience.

“Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt was a massively positive experience. It gave us the chance to show our technology to the world and have meaningful conversations with investors, accelerators, incubators, solo founders and developers.”

World-class speakers, a raucous pitch competition, awesome exhibitors and full-tilt networking. That’s just some of what you’ll experience at Disrupt Berlin 2018 on November 29-30 at the Arena Berlin. Do yourself a favor and experience it at the best possible price. Super early-bird tickets disappear next week. Buy your passes today.

Popular crypto wallet service MyEtherWallet has just launched a limited beta version of its first companion mobile app, which we wrote about earlier this week.

If you’re a big MyEtherWallet user or just curious about crypto, you’ll want to get hold of the app. Since it’s in beta, you’ll need to head here and follow the instructions to email the company to request access. A full launch for iOS and Android is expected in August.

The MEW Connect app allows users to log into the service without typing their private key, just like hardware solutions such as Ledger or Trezor. That’s important because inputting sensitive information like a private key can lead to an account being compromised in the event of a phishing attack. At least two major incidents have happened this year, so the threat is very real.

Unlike Ledger or Trezor, though, MEW Connect is free which could help encourage more people to adopt better security practices since MyEtherWallet.com is a much-trafficked website. The company says its domain sees upwards of 600,000 visitors each day.

MyEtherWallet founder Kosala Hemachandra told TechCrunch that he hopes beta users will comb through the code and help find issues with the app before its wider release to all, and the arrival of the Android app. Those with bugs can submit them on HackerOne here, where the rewards on offer range from $250 to $2,000.

Beyond enabling a secure connection for MyEtherWallet.com users, the app could offer features including payments in the future, Hemachandra admitted, which could provide a major boost to the crypto industry as it aims to reach more mainstream attention.

MyEtherWallet isn’t the only service supporting a connection app. MyCrypto.com, a service that broke away from MyEtherWallet earlier this year, MyCrypto.com supports the Parity Signer app.

Note: The author owns a small amount of cryptocurrency. Enough to gain an understanding, not enough to change a life.