Month: August 2018

LetGo, the app-based marketplace for people to sell each other second-hand goods, has nabbed a great deal of its own. Today, the startup announced that it has picked up an extra $500 million in funding from Naspers, the South African e-commerce and media giant, which it plans to use to double down on growth, both in its core second-hand goods sales as well as in newer areas such as the housing listings that it launched last month.

The company is not disclosing valuation, although a source close to the business confirmed that it has definitely grown compared to its last funding round, when it raised about $100 million at around a $1 billion valuation. That means this round above $1.5 billion pre-money.

LetGo said that $150 million of the total was transferred earlier this summer. Naspers had been a previous investor, and other backers of the company include Accel, Insight Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, 14W, Eight Roads Ventures, Mangrove Capital Partners and FJ Labs.

LetGo competes with the likes of eBay, Craigslist, OfferUp (which has also broken through the $1 billion valuation barrier) and Facebook, among many others in the very crowded world of second-hand, locally-focused marketplaces .

Within that, however, it’s carved out a strong place for itself: LetGo says that its app has passed 100 million downloads and 400 million listings in total, with monthly listers up 65 percent since the start of this year. Some 13 million messages are sent daily in connection with goods on the site, and 6 billion messages have been sent since first opening for business three years ago. (The company does not break out any financials, but we are still digging on this and will update if/when we learn more.)

Part of its growth also has been due to some significant consolidation in the space: in 2016 it merged with rival Wallapop in a bid for more scale, and reportedly was looking to merge also with Offerup at one point.

“We are extraordinarily fortunate to have investors who believe so strongly in our vision and team,” said LetGo cofounder Alec Oxenford in a statement. “We are fueling unprecedented growth in the secondhand economy through meaningful innovation. Our app makes it simple for tens of millions of buyers and sellers to connect in their own neighborhoods so they can put more money in their pockets, declutter their lives and put their space to better use.”

Patreon is forming a patronage empire. Today it acquired white-labeled subscription membership platform Memberful, which lets creators sell exclusive access to content through their own site instead of a centralized platform like Patreon. Rather than being folded into a Patreon feature, Memberful will run as an independent brand maintaining its tiered pricing structure, though new sign-ups will get a rate closer to Patreon’s low 5 percent rake.

Terms weren’t disclosed for the deal that brings Memberful’s whole seven-person team and 500 paying clients aboard. But Patreon clearly sees rolling up competitors and complements in the patronage space as a worthy use of its $60 million raise at a $450 million valuation late last year that brought it to $105 million in funding. In June, Patreon bought Kit to let creators bundle in merchandise with their perks for paying monthly subscribers. It also bought out competitor Subbable back in 2015.

By teaming up, Patreon and Memberful will be able to provide subscription patronage services for creators, whether they want their fan community to live on Patreon, or through Memberful on their own WordPress or website with integrations of Stripe and MailChimp. Patreon already has 2 million patrons paying an average of $12 each to a total of 100,000 creators, and it expects to pay out $300 million in 2018 alone. The acquisition could let Patreon move up market, recruiting comedians, illustrators, game developers, and vloggers that already have an established audience elsewhere.

“I think membership is on the up and is going to grow for the next decade” says Patreon VP of Product Wyatt Jenkins. “Our strategy is to be an open, neutral platform” as opposed to a focusing on one type of content like YouTube with videos or Twitch with streaming where you’re locked into that platform’s tools. Memberful, launched in 2013, has bootstrapped the creation of its white-labeled tools without the need for venture funding.

Memberful gives creators like Stratechery’s Ben Thompson (who has an interview with Patreon CEO Jack Conte about the acquistion) and podcast producer Gimlet Media full control over branding with no Patreon chrome. But it’s more expensive and also requires more work since creators have to manage their own site, customer service, and payment processing. Memberful takes a 10 percent cut with no monthly fee for its limited basic tier, or $25 per month plus 4.9 percent for the full-featured pro version, though it also offers enterprise pricing. That pricing will remain for existing users, but “new customers will see a transaction fee closer to Patreon’s”, which is a flat 5 percent a Patreon spokesperson tells me. Patreon does basically everything for a creator, but it also ropes them into the Patreon-branded ecosystem that promotes other content makers too.

Sometimes Patreon handling everything can be a problem, though. Last week it experienced a higher-than-normal volume of declines from banks of charges to patrons. That left some creators without their expected income, and required patrons to deal with the chore of calling their bank to tell them paying $1, $5, or $20 per month to their favorite creator wasn’t fraud. Patreon now tells me that “as of Friday, we let everyone know that we were back to normal decline rates, and were going to continue retrying the rest of the cards like we normally do.”

It makes sense for Patreon to race to consolidate the patronage industry as it’s being invaded by giant incumbents. Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook all offer their own versions of paid subscriptions to creators that get patrons extra perks like exclusive content or badges so they stick out in chat rooms full of fans. While those platforms are all focused on video streamers, they still pose a threat to Patreon that needs to maximize the number of successful creators it hosts in order to earn enough from its tiny cut of payments. Facebook especially could muscle in, since many creators already run their own Facebook Pages.

Asked about competition from those platforms, Jenkins said “I think there’s a strong chance it’s a tailwind. The concept of membership is pretty new. If those big companies are going to drop millions of dollars into marketing the concept of membership I think that’s great. He stressed the question of “Do you want to own your fan base? On YouTube, those aren;t your fans, they’re YouTube users. YouTube is incentivized to keep them watching videos so it can show ads.”

That might lead fans to unsubscribe from a creator as YouTube promotes other similar ones they could watch instead. “You don’t own the relationship.” Facebook Page admins have found that out the hard way as algorithm changes prioritizing friends over public figures, making it tough to reach the followers they spent years begging to like them. If Patreon can offer creators audience growth through discovery on its interconnected network without cannibalizing anyone’s member counts, its neutrality and focus could make it a leader in this new wing of the digital economy.

Yesterday Oracle announced a new online transaction processing database service, finally bringing its key database technology into the cloud. The company, which has been around for over four decades made its mark selling databases to the biggest companies in the world, but as the world has changed, large enterprise customers have been moving increasingly to the cloud. These autonomous database products could mark Oracle’s best hope for cloud success.

The database giant, which has a market cap of over $194 billion and over $67 billion in cash on hand certainly has options no matter what happens with its cloud products. Yet if the future of enterprise computing is in the cloud, the company needs to find some sustained success there, and what better way to lure its existing customers than with its bread and butter database products.

Oracle has demonstrated a stronger commitment to the cloud in recent years after showing it much disdain for it. In fact, it announced it would be building 12 new regional data centers earlier this year alone, but it wasn’t always that way. Company founder and executive chairman Larry Ellison famously made fun of the cloud as “more fashion driven than women’s fashion.” Granted that was in 2008, but his company certainly came late to the party.

A different kind of selling

The cloud is not just a different way of delivering software, platform and infrastructure, it’s a different way of selling. While switching databases might not be an easy thing to do for most large companies, the cloud subscription payment model still offers a way out that licensing rarely did. As such, it requires more of a partnership between vendor and customer. After years of having a reputation of being aggressive with customers, it may be even harder for them to make this shift.

Salesforce exec Keith Block (who was promoted to Co-CEO just yesterday), worked at Oracle for 20 years before joining Salesforce in 2013. In an interview with TechCrunch in 2016, when asked specifically about the differences between Oracle and Salesforce, he contrasted the two company’s approaches and the challenges a company like Oracle, born and raised in the open prem world, faces as it shifts to the cloud. It takes more than a change in platform, he said.

“You also have to have the right business model and when you think about our business model, it is a ‘shared success model’. Basically, as you adopt the technology, it’s married to our payment schemes. So that’s very, very important because if the customer doesn’t win, we don’t win,” Block said at the time.

John Dinsdale, chief analyst and managing director at Synergy Research, a firm that keeps close watch on the cloud market, agrees that companies born on-prem face adjustments when moving to the cloud. “In order to survive and thrive in today’s cloud-oriented environment, any software company that grew up in the on-prem world needs to have powerful, cost-effective products that can be packaged and delivered flexibly – irrespective of whether that is via the cloud or via some form of enhanced on-prem solution,” he said.

Database as a Service or bust

All that said, if Oracle could adjust, it has the advantage of having a foothold inside the enterprise. It also claims a painless transition from on-prem Oracle database to its database cloud service, which if a company is considering moving to the cloud could be attractive. There is also the autonomous aspect of its cloud database offerings, which promises to be self-tuning, self-healing with automated maintenance and updates and very little downtime.

Carl Olofson, an analyst with IDC who covers the database market sees Oracle’s database service offerings as critical to its cloud aspirations, but expects business could move slowly here. “Certainly, this development (Oracle’s database offerings) looms large for those whose core systems run on Oracle Database, but there are other factors to consider, including any planned or active investment in SaaS on other cloud platforms, the overall future database strategy, the complexity of moving operations from the datacenter to the cloud, and so on. So, I expect actual movement here to be gradual.” he said.

Adam Ronthal, an analyst at Gartner sees the database service offerings as Oracle’s best chance for cloud success. “The Autonomous Data Warehouse and the Autonomous Transaction Processing offerings are really the first true cloud offerings from Oracle. They are designed and architected for cloud, and priced competitively. They are strategic and it is very important for Oracle to demonstrate success and value with these offerings as they build credibility and momentum for their cloud offerings,” he said.

The big question is can Oracle deliver in a cloud context using a more collaborative sales model, which is still not clear. While it showed some early success as it has transitioned to the cloud, it’s always easier easier to move from a small market share number to a bigger one, and the numbers (when they have given them) have flipped in the wrong direction in recent earnings reports.

As the stakes grow ever higher, Oracle is betting on what it’s known best all along, the databases that made the company. We’ll have to wait and see if that bet pays off or if Oracle’s days of database dominance are numbered as business looks to public cloud alternatives.

H1Z1 has spent a couple months on PS4 in an open beta. But today, the Battle Royale game is officially making its debut on the PlayStation platform.

Much like Fortnite Battle Royale, which has swept the gaming world unlike almost any title before it, H1Z1 drops 100 players into a map where they must loot up and survive. Unlike Battle Royale, H1Z1 is relatively more realistic, with a much larger map, more drab colors, and a handful of drivable vehicles.

Interestingly, H1Z1 was one of the earlier Battle Royale games during the game type’s wave of popularity, catching the attention of pro gamers back in 2015. Back then, the game was only available via Steam.

Since, games like PUBG and Fortnite have grown wildly, forcing H1Z1 makers Daybreak to play a bit of catch up.

But today, H1Z1 goes officially live on the PS4, giving gamers who are sick of Fortnite’s bubbly world a chance to get into the Battle Royale world in a different way.

Plus, Daybreak has added in a Fortnite-style Battle Pass for the season, letting PS4 players unlock reward levels for $5.49. H1Z1 is also getting a couple new weapons, including a Sniper Rifle and an RPG, as well as an ARV that can fit a full team of five.

You can check out the launch trailer below:

IDC’s latest tablet numbers tell a familiar story. Shipments are down yet again, a trend that shows no sign of abating. There is, however, one clear bright spot in all of this, bucking the trend.

Quarter after quarter, convertibles have continued to grow, as users have demanded more productivity than is traditionally possible with slates. It’s no surprise, then, that Apple, Microsoft, Google and Samsung are all vying for mindshare. The convertible segment may still be small, but at least it’s moving in the right direction.

Samsung’s shifted approaches a number of times over the years. Say what you will about the company’s approach to devices, but at least the company’s everything-and-the-kitchen-sink model has allowed them to stay limber for such a hulking hardware behemoth. The Galaxy Tab S4 simultaneously finds the company building on existing technology, while attempting to reinvent the wheel in the process.

The Tab S4 isn’t a radical departure from its predecessor, save for one key thing: DeX. The brand, which previously referred to smartphone docking stations for Galaxy handsets, is now the name of the custom desktop version of Android Samsung built. The change clearly hasn’t fully taken, however — Samsung’s official DeX site has yet to reflect the move as of this writing. But, then, the company’s clearly been busy these past few weeks.

Porting it over to the tablet means the company can offer a device that’s capable of doing double duty as both a standard slate tablet and a makeshift laptop. It’s also a roundabout of way of not relying on Windows 10 on the Galaxy line. After all, the ability to switch modes has long been the operating system’s raison d’être, so this really feels like a thumb in the eye of Microsoft. Given the recent well-received launch of the Surface Go, however, I suspect the company’s not really sweating the slight.

I didn’t get a great justification from Samsung as to the motivation behind the move ahead of launch. I suspect the whole thing boils down to control — something you’re afforded a lot more of when you work with Android vs. Windows. There’s also the fact that Windows 10 doesn’t have nearly the selection of apps you get with Android — definitely a major factor if you’re working with the more locked down/tablet-friendly 10 S.

DeX in effect

The result is something of a mixed bag. I will say that the DeX layout looks better on the 10.5-inch display, rather than the big, curved DeX docking monitor, where the Android icons feel entirely out of place.

For the most part, the DeX version of Android operates the same as the standard tablet version, allbeit with smaller icons. The desktop features three by default: My Files, Gallery and Settings. With the latter, you can adjust the DeX settings, so the OS automatically switches to the mode when you plug the tablet into the keyboard dock (though not the other way around, oddly).

I’d prefer it if the DeX settings were more easily accessible in the drop down menu, but one gets the impression that Samsung’s still working out some of the kinks on this one. Also, while it’s possible to get it to auto switch, the tablet screen always switches off when removed from the dock. A slight nuisance, but not the end of the world.

The biggest nuisance is, predictably, the same issue you run into on ChromeOS ever since Google allowed Play Store access. There simply aren’t that many apps optimized for the mode. You can access them through the Apps for Samsung Desk header located in the familiar Android apps menu. The company didn’t disclose the number of compatible apps for good reason. There are like 16. On the upside, the company teamed with Microsoft for Word/PowerPoint/Excel — all important inclusions when you’re pushing productivity on your shiny new device.

There are some other big names here, like Amazon WorksSpaces and The New York Times. There’s also Deezer, which seems to be eager to get on any operating system that will have them, bless their hearts. There’s also TripAdvisor and Craigslist, neither of which I would honestly put on my list of must-need desktop apps.

The main issue with the unoptimized apps is scalability — and the fact that they’re not designed to work well with the mouse input (which is, admittedly, optional). They do run, but opening them to full screen size requires restarting the app every time. One assumes, however, that more companies will get on board if the new Tab proves a hit for the company.

I’m not really convinced that DeX was the right choice over Android here, but at the very least, it gives the company room to grow on that side of things. It also offers an important differentiator over the iPad Pro, which has introduced some desktop-like functionality, but still relies on standard iOS. Apple’s been wary to blur the lines between desktop and laptop too much, relinquishing the upper hand to Samsung here.

Just in case

Here’s a bit of a shocking admission: I actually kind of like the keyboard case. I didn’t expect to. I don’t really ever like keyboard cases. They’re one of the bigger barriers between me and the possibility of ever taking convertibles too seriously as a potential laptop replacement. The keys on the S4 are plasticky, sure, but I prefer them to the standard keyboard case found on products like the Surface Go, which basically feels like typing on felt.

That said, there’s really no getting around how cramped the keyboard is, when designed for a 10-inch tablet. I considered pulling the Tab out for meetings multiple times this week, but ultimately thought better of it. I’m sure I’d be able to ramp up my speed given enough time with the system, but it ultimately wasn’t worth the potential of missing some important points, as my fingers struggled to keep up.

The lack of a trackpad feels like a glaring omission. Granted, it’s not exactly standard on keyboard cases these days, but Microsoft certainly demonstrated that it’s possible on a small scale with the Surface Go. And given the prominence of desktop mode here, one expects to be using the cursor as much as touch here. You can always use the S-Pen or buy a bluetooth mouse, but it seems a shame to have to add that cost on top of the keyboard case’s $149 asking price.

Bonus points, however, for including an S-Pen slot in the keyboard case for those of us who would lose our heads if they weren’t attached. The magnetic Microsoft pen that sticks to the side of the Surface is still the one to beat, but the holster does the trick, too.

All work, no play?

I remain skeptical as ever that convertibles will serve as a sufficient replacement for both laptop and tablet. I’m certainly not in a rush to put my MacBook out to pasture. That said, the devices provide a nice supplemental function for those who don’t want to port their heavier PCs around.

The $649 Tab S4 certainly has solid specs, with 4GB of RAM and up to 256GB of storage (augmented via microSD). The 7,300mAh battery can’t compete with the iPad Pro’s 8,134, but it should get you through a day’s use, no problem. The screen is solid for movie playback, and ditto for those AKG-tuned speakers.

I liked the keyboard more than I thought I would, as well, though it’s a bit cramped and using a keyboard without a trackpad feels like relying on a phantom limb. The DeX desktop, meanwhile, is an interesting addition to the tightening convertible tablet race, though it’s got a ways to go before it feels as fully fleshed out Windows 10.

Facebook is diving deeper into in-house game development with the launch of its own version of Snapchat’s multiplayer augmented reality video chat games. Today, Facebook Messenger globally launches its first two AR video chat games that you can play with up to six people.

“Don’t Smile” is like a staring contest that detects if you grin, and then users AR to contort your it’s an exaggerated Joker’s smirk while awarding your opponent the win. “Asteroids Attack” sees you move your face around the navigate a space ship, avoiding rocks and grabbing laser beam powerups. Soon, Facebook also plans to launch “Beach Bump” for passing an AR ball back and forth, and a “Kitten Craze” cat matching game. To play the games, you start a video chat, hit the Star button to open the filter menu, and then select one of the games. You can snap and share screenshots to your chat thread while you play.

The games are effectively a way to pass the time while you video chat, rather than something you’d ever play on your own. They could be a hit with parents and grandparents who are away and want to spend time with a kid…who isn’t exactly the best conversationalist.

Facebook tells me it built these games itself using the AR Studio tool it launched last year to let developers create their own AR face filters. When asked if game development would be available to everyone through AR studio, a spokesperson told me “Not today, but we’ve seen sucessful short-session AR games developed by the creator community and are always looking out for ways to bring the best AR content to the FB family of apps.”

For now, there will be no ads, sponsored branding, or in-app purchases in Messenger’s video chat games. But those all offer opportunities for Facebook and potentially outside developers to earn money. Facebook could easily show an ad interstitial between game rounds, let brands build games to promote movie releases or product launches, or let you buy powerups to beat friends or cosmetically upgrade your in-game face.

The games feel less polished than the launch titles for Snapchat’s Snappables gaming platform that launched in April. Snapchat focused on taking over your whole screen with augmented reality, transporting you into space or a disco dance hall. Facebook’s games merely overlay a few graphics on the world around you. But Facebook’s games are more purposefully designed for split-screen multiplayer. Snapchat is reportedly building its own third-party game development platform, but it seems Facebook wanted to get the drop on it.

The AR video chat games live separately from the Messenger Instant Games platform the company launched last year. These include arcade classics and new mobile titles that users can play by themselves and challenge friends over high-scores. Facebook now allows developers of Instant Games to monetize with in-app purchases and ads, foreshadowing what could come to AR video chat games.

Facebook has rarely developed its own games. It did build a few mini-games like an arcade pop-a-shot style basketball game and a soccer game to show off what the Messenger Instant Games platform could become. But typically it’s stuck to letting outside developers lead. Here, it may be trying to set examples of what developers should build before actually spawning a platform around video chat games.

Now with over 1.3 billion users, Facebook Messenger is seeking more ways to keep people engaged. Having already devoured many people’s one-on-one utility chats, it’s fun group chats, video calling, and gaming that could get people spending more time in the app.

It’s been a long and trip-filled wait but mixed reality headgear maker Magic Leap will finally, finally be shipping its first piece of hardware this summer.

We were still waiting on the price-tag — but it’s just been officially revealed: The developer-focused Magic Leap One ‘creator edition’ headset will set you back at least $2,295.

So a considerable chunk of change — albeit this bit of kit is not intended as a mass market consumer device (although Magic Leap’s founder frothed about it being “at the border of practical for everybody” in an interview with the Verge) but rather an AR headset for developers to create content that could excite future consumers.

A ‘Pro’ version of the kit — with an extra hub cable and some kind of rapid replacement service if the kit breaks — costs an additional $495, according to CNET. While certain (possibly necessary) extras such as prescription lenses also cost more. So it’s pushing towards 3x iPhone Xes at that point.

The augmented reality startup, which has raised at least $2.3 billion, according to Crunchbase, attracting a string of high profile investors including Google, Alibaba, Andreessen Horowitz and others, is only offering its first piece of reality bending eyewear to “creators in cities across the contiguous U.S.”.

Potential buyers are asked to input their zip code via its website to check if it will agree to take their money but it adds that “the list is growing daily”.

We tried the TC SF office zip and — unsurprisingly — got an affirmative of delivery there. But any folks in, for example, Hawaii wanting to spend big to space out are out of luck for now…

CNET reports that the headset is only available in six U.S. cities at this stage: Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco (Bay Area), and Seattle — with Magic Leap saying that “many” more will be added in fall.

The company specifies it will “hand deliver” the package to buyers — and “personally get you set up”. So evidently it wants to try to make sure its first flush of expensive hardware doesn’t get sucked down the toilet of dashed developer expectations.

It describes the computing paradigm it’s seeking to shift, i.e. with the help of enthused developers and content creators, as “spatial computing” — but it really needs a whole crowd of technically and creatively minded people to step with it if it’s going to successfully deliver that.

Founders for Change, an initiative from All Raise, is hosting its first-ever meetup for its group of founders focused on diversity and inclusion in tech. Since launching in March, Founders for Change has grown to more than 800 founders from companies like Pandora, Patreon, Shippo, PagerDuty, Udacity and others.

“It’s one of those things where the movement really resonated with a number of founders,” Freestyle Capital Partner and AllRaise FfC co-lead Jenny Lefcourt told TechCrunch. “It was an online movement and everywhere for a period of time. People continued to sign up but it was just online. This is the beginning.”

That’s to say that this is likely not the last meetup for founders. The aim of this particular meetup is to share best practices, learnings and offer tools for founders to better implement diversity and inclusion at their respective startups.

“That’s the impetus for the event on Monday,” Lefcourt said. “It’s the first gathering of so many of these founders on this subject.”

Throughout the day, there will be breakouts and sessions about building belonging, how, why and when to build a diverse board, why it’s important to implement diversity and inclusion efforts early on and more. TK says she’s expecting about 100 founders to be in attendance.

“We were pretty amazed that this many founders are going to give such a big chunk of the day and evening to diversity and inclusion,” Lefcourt said. “It makes it clear how important they all recognize it is.”

All Raise, the nonprofit organization that’s behind diversity and inclusion efforts like Female Founder Office Hours (FFOH) and Founders for Change (FfC), wants to increase the amount of funding female founders receive. Currently, female founders receive just 15 percent of all venture funding, according to All Raise. Within the next five years, All Raise wants to increase that to 25 percent, while also doubling the percentage of women in VC partner roles in the next 10 years.

MessageBird, the Amsterdam-based cloud communications platform backed by Accel in the U.S. and Europe’s Atomico, is unveiling a new product today that aims to make it easier for enterprises to communicate with customers across various channels of their choosing.

Dubbed “Programmable Conversations” (yes, really!), the product takes the form of a single API that unifies customer interactions across multiple channels into a single conversation thread. Out of the box these include WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, Line, Telegram, SMS and voice interactions. The idea is that by providing a consolidated view of a customer’s entire communication history with an enterprise, customer support agents and other customer-facing staff will have the firepower to stay on top of their game in terms of the customer service they provide.

Or, put another way, more communication channels inevitably lead to fragmented conversations, which, especially when multiple support staff are involved, can lead to a degradation of service. Programmable Conversations is an attempt to help solve this problem.

In a call with MessageBird founder and CEO Robert Vis, he told me that more broadly enterprises — and fast-growing startups — no longer have the luxury of dictating how and through what channels customers converse with them. Traditionally, customer service would be delivered via a dedicated phone number, but the plethora of established and emerging online messaging and communications channels has radically increased the number of options customers have and expect.

However, this creates a headache for businesses as each channel needs developer time to be integrated into an existing CRM or business process and additional staffing to service conversations across multiple channels.

It is this heavy lifting that MessageBird’s Programmable Conversations takes care off — keeping conversations in sync across multiple channels, for example, isn’t technically simple — thus cutting down on not just initial implementation time and cost, but also continued maintenance and upkeep.

Vis also explained that Programmable Conversations is designed to enable comms for enterprises that are global — including scale-ups with global ambitions from the get-go — in terms of the territories, carrier integrations and messaging platforms the company supports.

“Delivering communications experiences that improve customer satisfaction and loyalty has to be a focus of businesses today,” adds the MessageBird CEO in a statement. “Consumers today want to connect with businesses in the same way they do with their friends and family – on their own time, via their preferred channel with all the context of previous conversations. With Programmable Conversations enterprises can now easily build a modern communications experience while reducing the burden of their often over-tasked developers”.

When Anki invited us by the office last week to check out their latest creation, we weren’t sure what to expect. In the eight years since the company was founded by a trio of Carnegie Mellon graduates, it’s offered up a handful of distinctly different smart toys, from its Drive smart cars to 2016’s Cozmo robot.

The truth is that the company’s latest creation looks an awful lot like its last. In fact, the only immediately apparent change is a dark coat of paint, akin to what the iMac received when it graduated to the iMac Pro. In fact, that’s probably a pretty solid analogy beyond just the color change, so let’s stick with that.

Simply put, Vector is Cozmo for adults. In many ways, the new ‘bot is built on the lessons learned from Cozmo, coupled with more advanced internals. Vector has ~700 parts — double the number of its predecessor, while its brain is a much more advanced Snapdragon processor. Vector’s face also features a higher res display, making it capable of expressing subtler emotion redesigned by that staff of ex-Pixar and Dreamworks animators the company employs.

So, what does all of this add up to, exactly? The company certainly has some grand ambitions. Anki believes its well positioned to offer users the gateway to the next generation of home robots. Both R2-D2 and Rosie from the Jetsons are casually name-checked in the company’s press release, naturally.

The truth about Vector is more modest, though the product does seem like a much more mainstream solution than the recently departed Kuri. For one thing, it will run less than half the price at $250. That’s still $70 more than Cozmo, mind. Unlike Cozmo, however, Vector doesn’t require a constant smartphone connection — just WiFi — which is part of why having a more advanced on-board computation system is important.

Along with that, Vector also gets an HD camera with a 120-degree field of view, so it can double as a roaming security device (that functionality is coming next year) and four microphones, which allow it to Alexa-style commands with a “Hey Vector.” Like Cozmo, the robot will also initiate conversation when you make eye contact, so you don’t have to summon it ever time. Instead of opting for Alexa or Google Assistant, however, the company used third-party knowledge graphs to build its own system, so Vector doesn’t break character by launching another assistant.

Like Cozmo, I suspect the company’s got a lot planned for the robot by way of software updates. For the time being, however, I haven’t seen a lot that convinces me that Vector’s much more than a slightly more advanced Cozmo — which could make the pricey a robot toy a hard sell for serious adults. Broader ambitions should include a robot that can traverse more than limited range of a desktop, in order to better patrol the home.

iRobot’s upcoming smart home plans for the Roomba serve as a potential way forward for home robotics, though Anki believes that it has the upper hand here, by investing a good deal in personality from the outset. Perhaps people really do need that human to robot connection to really entrust their lives to such a device, though a compete lack of personality certainly hasn’t hurt Amazon’s Echo or Google Home. 

But Anki gets the benefit of the doubt here. This is all very early stages, and our early skepticism about Cozmo being a niche product was put to rest when the company managed to sell 1.5 million globally. Launching as a Kickstarter campaign should also help Anki assess early interest in the product and scale from there.

I remain skeptical as ever that Vector is the mainstream home robot of the future — it seems more of a stepping stone, really. And certainly Anki is being transparent about its job of constantly building on the learnings of past models. At the very least, the company’s got the interest, revenue and the funding to avoid the recent pitfalls of Sphero and Kuri.