Month: October 2018

I shared images I shot of the Palm device with a few co-workers ahead of this morning’s unveiling, and they were downright giddy. The new “ultra-mobile” device (a term us old people used to use to refer to something closer to a netbook) is a hard thing to contextualize without a picture, so I took a bunch, and many of my oft-jaded co-workers fell for the thing immediately.

The device, which is designed to split the difference between a smartphone and a smartwatch, is admittedly adorable. The startup behind the product employs designs with some impressive credentials, from Samsung to Frog Design.

Really, the device most obviously resembles an iPhone, shrunk down to a 3.3-inch display. The first iPhone, incidentally, had a 3.5-inch screen — though a lot has been done in the intervening 11 years to jam that kind of real estate into a far smaller footprint. And this device, fittingly, fits comfortably in the Palm of your hand.

But adorableness is hardly enough to convince a large swath of the public to shell out $349 for a product category they didn’t know they needed in their life until this morning. There are a number of issues. For one thing, this is a Verizon exclusive. Sure, our parent company’s parent company has a lot of subscribers, but you’re already writing off a number of potential buyers with the fact that you need an existing VZW plan to tack the Palm onto. Oh, and that will run you an additional $10 a month.

[Note: I did not take this photo of Steph.]

I’m sure you’re already imagining the ways this thing will fit into your life. If not, Palm investor, accessory designer and Splash Brother Stephen Curry is happy to help you. The Warrior all-star has been incorporating the product into his off-season workouts, and certainly there’s something to be said for the much smaller form factor when it comes to strapping it to your arm for NBA workouts.

For the rest of us, perhaps the reborn Palm represents freedom from being tethered to our six-inch smartphones. Granted, it’s still a smartphone of sorts, but it’s a start. And the device can help you get a lot more done than your average smartwatch — though I speak from experience when I say it’s going to take a lot of practice to get used to typing on that tiny screen again.

The Palm runs Android (8.1), naturally. Though the company has created a custom skin that forgoes the desktop and takes you right into the app tray. From there, you can reorder your apps based on preference. And yes, unlike Wear OS, they run as their full versions here.

The device is IP68 water-resistant and sports an 800mAh battery — not big, but then, neither is the screen, so they ought to even each other out. Palm rates it as “All Day.” Inside, you also get 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage and a Snapdragon 435. Those are bad smartphone specs, but perhaps good specs as far as “ultra-mobiles” go? Hard to say. The category didn’t really exist until right now.

The newly reborn Palm created the device with help from supplier TCL. Unlike TCL’s BlackBerry deal, however, the startup owns the exclusive rights to the once-mighty Palm name and operates independently of the massive Chinese phone maker.

Cute? Check. Interesting? Double check. Ready to disrupt the industry? The jury is definitely still out on that one.

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Truphone — a UK startup that provides global mobile voice and data services by way of an eSIM model for phones, tablets and IoT devices — said that it has raised another £18 million ($23.7 million) in funding; additionally securing £36 million ($47 million) more “on a conditional basis” to expand its business after signing “a number of high-value deals.”

It doesn’t specify which deals these are, but Truphone was an early partner of Apple’s to provide eSIM-based connectivity to the iPad; and it will also be offering a service for new iPhone XS and XR models, taking advantage of the dual SIM capability. Truphone says that strategic partners of the company include Apple (“which chose Truphone as the only carrier to offer global data, voice and text plans on the iPad and iPhone digital eSIM”); Synopsys, which has integrated Truphone’s eSIM technology into its chipset designs; and Workz Group, a SIM manufacturer, which has a license from Truphone for its GSMA-accredited remote SIM provisioning platform and SIM operating system.

The company said that this funding, which was made by way of a rights issue, values Truphone at £386 million ($507 million at today’s rates) post-money. Truphone told TechCrunch that the funding came from Vollin Holdings and Minden Worldwide — two investment firms with ties to Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch who also owns the Chelsea football club, among other things — along with unspecified minority shareholders. Collectively, Abramovich-connected entities control more than 80 percent of the company.

We have asked the company for more detail on what the conditions are for the additional £36 million in funding to be released and all it is willing to say is that “it’s KPI-driven and related to the speed of growth in the business.”

For some context, Truphone most recently raised money almost exactly a year ago, when it picked up £255 million also by way of a rights issue, and also from the same two big investors. The large amount that time was partly being raised to retire debt. That deal was done at a valuation of £370 million ($491 million at the time of the deal). Going just on sterling values, this is a slight down-round.

Truphone, however, says that business is strong right now:

“The appetite for our technology has been enormous and we are thrilled that our investors have given us the opportunity to accelerate and scale these groundbreaking products to market,” said Ralph Steffens, CEO, Truphone, in a statement. “We recognised early on that the more integrated the supply chain, the smoother the customer experience. That recognition paid off—not just for our customers, but for our business. Because we have this capability, we can move at a speed and proficiency that has never before seen in our industry. This investment is particularly important because it is testament not just to our investors’ confidence in our ambitions, but pride in our accomplishments and enthusiasm to see more of what we can do.”

Truphone is one of a handful of providers that is working with Apple to provide plans for the digital eSIM by way of the MyTruphone app. Essentially this will give users an option for international data plans while travelling — Truphone’s network covers 80 countries — without having to swap out the SIMs for their home networks.

The eSIM technology is bigger than the iPhone itself, of course: some believe it could be the future of how we connect on mobile networks. On phones and tablets, it does away with users ordering, and inserting or swapping small, fiddly chips into their devices (that ironically is also one reason that carriers have been resistant to eSIMs traditionally: it makes it much easier for their customers to churn away). And in IoT networks where you might have thousands of connected, unmanned devices, this becomes one way of scaling those networks.

“eSIM technology is the next big thing in telecommunications and the impact will be felt by everyone involved, from consumers to chipset manufacturers and all those in-between,” said Steve Alder, chief business development officer at Truphone. “We’re one of only a handful of network operators that work with the iPhone digital eSIM. Choosing Truphone means that your new iPhone works across the world—just as it was intended.” Of note, Alder was the person who brokered the first iPhone carrier deal in the UK, when he was with O2.

Truphone has not released numbers detailing how many devices are using its eSIM services at the moment — either among enterprises or consumers — but it has said that customers include more than 3,500 multinational enterprises in 196 countries. We’ll update this post as we learn more.

In just about two months, the TechCrunch crew will head to Lagos, Nigeria to host the day-long, action-packed Startup Battlefield Africa 2018. Come join us and watch the founders of Africa’s best early-stage tech startups compete for the glory, cash and investor love that only Startup Battlefield provides.

We have a limited number of spectator tickets available for the December 11 event, so don’t waste time — buy your ticket here today.

We’re not kidding when we call this an action-packed day. While the Battlefield pitch competition is the crown jewel, we’re also creating a slate of outstanding speakers who will hold forth on vital topics affecting the region.

Topics like venture capital investing, something that Kola Aina, CEO and founder of Lagos-based Ventures Platform, will be on hand to discuss. And if blockchain is your bag, you won’t want to miss hearing IIyinoluwa Aboyeji’s take on that subject. He’s the founder and CEO of Flutterwave, a Lagos-based payment solution startup designed to transfer funds between Africa and abroad.

If you haven’t heard, we recently announced that Omobola Johnson, a senior partner at TLcom Capital, and Lexi Novitske, the principal investment officer for Singularity Investments, will take part in a panel discussion. Keep an eye on TechCrunch, because we’ll be announcing even more speakers in the coming weeks.

Okay, let’s talk about the main event. Startup Battlefield consists of three preliminary rounds with up to five startups in each round. Each startup team gets six minutes to pitch and present a live demo to a panel of judges consisting of top tech founders and VCs. Those judges then have six minutes to question each team thoroughly.

No more than five teams move to the finals for another round of pitches and more probing inquisition. Only one startup will emerge victoriously and claim the title: Startup Battlefield Africa 2018 champion.

The winning founders receive US$25,000 in no-equity cash, plus a trip for two to compete in Startup Battlefield in San Francisco at TechCrunch Disrupt 2019 (assuming the company still qualifies to compete at the time).

Startup Battlefield Africa 2018 takes place on December 11 in Lagos, Nigeria. Don’t miss your chance to watch Africa’s most talented startup founders launch their dream on a global stage, learn about the exciting tech trends emerging across the continent and enjoy world-class networking while you’re at it. Buy your spectator tickets here.

Stride.VC, the new VC fund from Fred Destin, formerly a partner at Accel, and Harry Stebbings, producer of the “The Twenty Minute VC” podcast and ex-Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Atomico, is being officially unveiled today, confirming most of the details of my earlier report.

The fund has closed at just over its £50 million target and will be used to do seed investments exclusively in U.K. startups (at least for now). The team has been bolstered, too, with Arj Soysa, ex-Atomico and most recently head of finance for LGT Impact, joining as operating partner. The firm also disclosed its first investment earlier this month, backing healthcare messaging app Forward Health.

In a call with Destin last week and followed up over subsequent emails with the pair, I got further details on Stride.VC’s LPs and how Destin and Stebbings plan to approach seed investing. Kicking off, I asked if perhaps there was already enough money in the U.K. (and elsewhere in Europe) chasing seed-stage startups.

“We don’t think there is too much seed money at work in Europe,” says Destin. “We think tech startups are impacting more and more industries and sectors so the importance and impact of great founders is growing. It’s logical that the VC market grows alongside the startup ecosystem. Just look at the amazing diversity of projects coming out of London and the spread of industries people are going after.

“Stride is fundamentally trying to answer the question of ‘if all the stars are aligned, what could this look like’ and constantly strives for greatness. Founders often tell us that ‘real’ risk appetite is still missing in the venture capital community”.

The pair say they plan to write “meaningful seed checks,” typically in the region of £1.5 million, but will consider anything pre-Series A that enables founders to make the next jump convincingly. “We exclusively do seed and we get diluted with our founders over time,” they tell me.

“We are happy to write those larger checks when it matters most, when the data is ambiguous, the startups are still raw and constant change is the name of the game. “We embrace the chaos that can surround a business at that stage. We don’t make assumptions and ensure we can all question and challenge each other to maker the best decisions. Our intention is to weaponise both the expertise and the ignorance of everybody around the table”.

The point of differentiation — if I’ve read correctly — is that Stride.VC wants to do less but larger seed investments than perhaps some other small seed firms in Europe. This, the pair say, is partly what they mean by conviction investing and the absolute opposite end of the spray ‘n’ pray spectrum.

“We undertake fewer projects that many of our peers. This is a factor of both the size of cheque we write and the profile of founder we’re looking for. We are not claiming our strategy is better — it’s just different. We undertake fewer projects with absolute conviction,’ they both write.

Currently, the firm is 100 percent focused on the U.K., but Destin and Stebbings say they will relax that rule once Stride.VC’s operations are well honed. With that said, there are no plans to become a pan-European venture capital firm as “proximity matters,” so any entry into another market will only be done after careful consideration.

In terms of investment thesis or specific sectors or technology the pair are looking to invest in, they say that entrepreneurs are “fundamentally better at finding white spaces than VCs are,” and so the aim is to be as “mentally plastic” as possible.

“Having said that, we only invest in what we understand well, so right now we are primarily focused on the upper echelons of the stack, which means exceptional product experiences that wow the user or customer. Our themes will evolve as we grow the team and continuously learn about new markets. We don’t view machine learning or blockchain as standalone themes but rather as key long-term enablers of innovation”.

Meanwhile, a raft of new LPs are being disclosed. Mostly notably they include publicly-listed U.K. venture capital firm Draper Esprit, who I’m told was one of the first batch of investors to commit to the new fund as part of its fund-of-funds initiative.

In addition, the other LPs are Delin Capital, Compagnie Nationale a Portefeuille (Groupe Frere), Korelya Capital, Entree Capital, Merifin as well as the newly de-merged marketplaces division of Schibsted (codenamed MPI).

A number of notable founders and industry execs have also invested including Alex Chesterman of Zoopla, Henri Moissinac from Uber, Garrett Curran, Riccardo Zacconi and Stephane Kurgan of King.com, Ahmed Husain, and others.

Penta, the German fintech startup that offers a digital bank account targeting SMEs, has raised €7 million in Series A funding. Backing the company once again is Inception Capital, with total funding now at €10 million since Penta was founded in May 2016.

Launched in Germany in December, and powered by Banking-as-a-Platform solarisBank (rather than holding a banking license of its own), Penta is designed to meet the banking needs of small to medium-sized businesses, including startups.

The premise is that SMEs are currently underserved by incumbent banks, including account opening being cumbersome and much more difficult than it should be and exorbitant fees charged for making payments or international money exchange.

Penta is also bringing some much-need innovation and features to the German business banking market.

One of those is multi-card support to make it easier to manage company expenses. Dubbed ‘Team Access,’ the recently launched feature lets business owners issue multiple MasterCards to employees who need to make purchases on a company’s behalf.

Each card is linked to a business’ Penta account but can have custom rules and permissions per card/employee, in terms of how much money can be spent and where. More broadly, the feature is designed to cut down the time and cost of expense management for SMEs.

Notably, I’m told that the Berlin-based challenger bank, which has already grown to a team of 40 and plans to get to 100 over the next year, is seeing 68 percent of new customers switching from their existing business bank account, with the remaining 40 percent newly incorporated businesses.

That suggest many German businesses aren’t satisfied with the banking status quo, even if they’ve already crossed the account opening hurdle. Specifically, I understand that multi-card support has been one of the main draw, the kind of feature that older banks with legacy software often struggle to deliver.

If you’re as serious about saving money as you are about startups, it’s time to handeln sie — take action! TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin 2018 takes place on 29-30 November, and you definitely want to attend this conference at the best possible price.

That means you need to buy your pass now before the price increase goes into effect on 24 October. We’re serious about rewarding action, and you’ll save up to €500 simply by breaking free from procrastination’s expensive grip.

Speaking of action, you’ll enjoy an inordinate amount of it packed into your two days at Disrupt Berlin. Let’s start with a sample of just some of the incredible speakers we have on tap:

• You’ll hear Denys Zhadanov, VP at Readdle, talk about the mobile app company’s bootstrapped success —100 million downloads and counting.
• Mike Collett, founder and managing partner of Promus Ventures, will talk about why there’s a lot more to space tech than just SpaceX.
• Taxify’s Markus Villig and Via Transportation’s Daniel Ramot will take the stage to talk about the challenges of challenging Uber.

Then there’s Startup Battlefield, the thrilling pitch competition where 15 of the best early-stage startups across Europe will go head-to-head for glory and a $50,000 cash prize while they launch their startups on a global stage.

You’ll find even more outstanding startups in Startup Alley. Our expo floor will be home to more than 400 early-stage startups showcasing their tech products, services, platforms and talent. Whether you’re searching for funding, recruiting technologists, looking for your next job or to invest in the next big thing, Startup Alley is a breeding ground of opportunity.

If the thought of wading through a crowd of thousands looking for the right people to meet sounds daunting, you’ll want to check out CrunchMatch, our free business match-making service. Last year, investors and founders used it to connect and discuss potential funding opportunities based on similar goals and interests. This year, we’re making CrunchMatch available to all Disrupt Berlin attendees. Presto, networking made easy.

We’ve just barely scratched the surface on all the events and programming you can expect — which also includes interactive workshops, panel discussions throughout the content-packed two days and, of course, our totally off-the-hook After Party.

Disrupt Berlin 2018 will be ready to roll on 29-30 November, and we can’t wait to see you there. You can save up to €500, but only if you handeln sie — take action — before 24 October. Buy your tickets today!

Entrepreneur First (EF), the London-HQ’d company builder that invests in individuals “pre-team, pre-idea” to enable them to found new startups, is scaling up rapidly, as it promised to so. Already running programs in Paris, Berlin, London, Singapore, and Hong Kong, the so-called talent-first investor is setting up shop in Bangalore, India.

Although referred to as the “Silicon Valley of India,” Bangalore fits the EF bill quite well in terms of being a tech hub with latent potential, especially when measured by the small number of truly international startups it has produced. What’s also interesting — and something EF co-founder Matt Clifford noted on a brief call with me on Friday — is that India has long-been a source for tech talent generally but this has often been an export industry, spanning prominent leaders of major U.S. tech companies, right down to traditional development outsourcing. “It’s out chance to help reverse the brain drain,” is one way that Clifford framed it.

With that said, EF also notes that, according to Startup Genome, Bangalore’s startup ecosystem is valued at $19 billion, with an estimated 1,800-2,300 active tech startups. “The past decade has seen it shift from a purely skill-based factory model to a more startup mindset. There is a genuine interest in tech and an ability to attract highly skilled tech workers,” says the company builder.

To that end, EF will invest around $55,000 in each of the companies developed during its bi-annual Bangalore program, while also providing cohort members a monthly stipend of $2,500 as they develop their startup ideas in the first three months. Segments that EF will primarily focus on include defensible technology, AI, machine learning, and robotics, in addition to any opportunities spotted for deep tech consumer companies in India. Graduating startups from EF Bangalore will pitch to “leading regional and global investors” at Investor Day in Singapore next July, alongside counterparts from EF’s Hong Kong and Singapore programs.

Meanwhile, the latest EF expansion follows a $12.4 million funding round in 2017 led by Silicon Valley’s Greylock Partners, which also saw Greylock’s Reid Hoffman join the company builder’s board. The capital — to be used for operational purposes and separate from EF’s multiple investment funds — was raised to enable EF to scale its program in multiple tech startup/academic hubs around the world, and where it deemed the EF “secret sauce” can bring the most value. (Separately, I’m hearing EF is on the verge of closing a new, quite large investment fund.)

At the time of Greylock’s backing, Hoffman told TechCrunch he could see the company builder expanding to “20 or 30 or 40 cities, maybe even 50“. Having now reached six cities, that is starting to look a lot less lofty, even if it is far from proven how smooth scaling a company builder in the image of EF can be.

We weren’t expecting to like “The Crown.”

Yes, there are talented actors and fancy costumes on-screen, and yes, there’s an acclaimed writer at the helm who specializes in dramatizing real history. But did we really need to watch another 20 hours of serious, scripted drama about England’s royal family?

Well, we were convinced to give the show a shot after it took home multiple awards at this year’s Emmys, and we were absolutely won over. It turns out that some of the questions that made us uncertain about the concept (such as: What’s the point of a monarchy in modern society?) are exactly what the show is trying to explore.

And it would be hard to overpraise those actors — not just Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth II, but also Matt Smith as her husband Prince Philip, Vanessa Kirby as Pricness Margaret, John Lithgow as Winston Churchill and Jared Harris as Elizabeth’s father, King George VI.

On the latest episode of the Original Content podcast, we’re joined by Catherine Shu to discuss the first two seasons of “The Crown,” and what we’re hoping to see in season three (with Foy and Smith replaced by older actors to play Elizabeth and Philip in middle age). We also discuss recently-revealed details about the upcoming Star Wars streaming series “The Mandalorian” and plans for an interactive episode of “Black Mirror.”

You can listen in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You also can send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)

Pilotworks, the distributed kitchen service which raised $13 million in venture funding from investors including Campbell’s Soup Co.’s investment arm, is shutting down.

The company issued a brief statement on its website yesterday with the news

It is with a heavy heart that after failing to raise the necessary capital to continue operations, Pilotworks will cease operations on October 13th, 2018. We realize the shock of this news and the disruption it causes for the independent food community we were so honored to serve.

This is a sad outcome for Pilotworks, the makers in our kitchens, and independent food in general. We wish there was another option to continue operating. Sadly, there was not. The work the independent food community is doing is amazing and inspiring. We know it will live on and we are deeply sorry it will not be with Pilotworks.

Questions can directed to questions@pilotworks.com and we will make every attempt to answer them the best we can.

Regretfully,
Pilotworks

Even as Pilotworks closes its doors. Other startups are ramping up distributed kitchens to appeal to established chains and new food concepts.

It seems that by focusing on new food entrepreneurs rather than reaching out to established chains, Pilotworks wasn’t able to reach the scale that its investors had hoped for.

In June, Pilotworks co-founder and chief executive Nick Devane stepped down from the CEO role and was replaced by company chief operating officer, Zach Ware, according to a report in The Spoon. 

Over a month later the company began retrenching and shuttering locations in Providence, R.I. and Portland, Maine where the company had set up locations.

 

In 1883, Krakatoa erupted, spewing volcanic ash and gas into the stratosphere, making clouds more reflective and cooling the entire planet by roughly 1° C that year. In 2018, the UN reported that human activity has already raised Earth’s temperature by 1°, and if we don’t do something drastic soon, the results will be catastrophic.

The optimal solution is staring us in the face, of course; reduce carbon emissions. Unfortunately this optimal solution is politically untenable and extremely expensive. A decade ago McKinsey estimated it would cost $1 trillion just to halve the growth of carbon emissions … in India alone. That’s still less than the cost of doing nothing — estimated at $20 trillion by Nature, which doesn’t include its toll on human lives — but it’s a cost which seems to make the necessary political decisions impossible.

The analysts … concluded that it was just human nature and you couldn’t fix it, and so they went for a quick cheap technical fix

• Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

There is another option. The root problem we face is not carbon concentrations but atmospheric temperature. There are other negative side effects of carbon emissions, like ocean acidification, but the temperature is the big one. We already know how to cool the planet without reducing carbon. The solution is so simple it’s almost laughable: just make our clouds a little more reflective, so they reflect more of the sun’s light, and thus reduce our heat. Volcanoes like Krakatoa do it all the time:

When Mount Tambora erupted in Indonesia in 1815 and spewed sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, farmers in New England recorded a summer so chilly that their fields frosted over in July. The Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines in 1991 cooled global temperatures by about half a degree Celsius for the next few years. A sulfur-aerosol project could produce a Pinatubo of sulfur dioxide every four years. The aerosol plan is also cheap—so cheap that it completely overturns conventional analysis of how to mitigate climate change.

Now, is this a good idea? Probably not. In the case of sulfur dioxide, definitely not; it will come back down as acid rain. But it’s worth noting that this solution is so (relatively) cheap, estimated at less than a billion dollars a year, that an individual nation — or, heck, even an individual; that’s less than Jeff Bezos spends on Blue Origin each year — could make it happen. The classic example is the low-lying, high-population nation of Bangladesh. At some point, it will become cheaper for Bangladesh to singlehandedly cool down the world with sulfur dioxide than to pay for the costs of climate change. Why would they not choose to do so?

There are better geoengineering solutions. Simple seawater could brighten marine clouds with the same effect … for more money. But in general, is geoengineering a good idea? Again, probably not. Proponents of cloud seeding say it will easily cool the earth back down to “normal” levels. Skeptics armed with climate models say it’s much more complicated than that; the atmosphere is a chaotic system, and the results will be localized, regional, and disruptive.

(Using iron fertilisation to generate plankton blooms that siphon carbon dioxide from the atmosphere has also been suggested, but it should go without saying that messing with the global oceanic ecosystem is also likely to have, at best, emergent properties.)

People do generally concede that cloud manipulation is a better idea than doing nothing at all, in that at least it would buy us 25 years or more in which to build (waves hands furiously) some kind of biotech carbon sink — with the caveat that, once we start seeding clouds, we can’t stop, because if we do, all the global warming we’ve been fending off will hit at once, in a huge hurry. Numbers like “a rate of up to 4°C per decade, or 20 times faster than at present” are bandied about. Needless to say this would be beyond catastrophic. If we were to start geoengineering, we couldn’t stop.

And yet. I keep seeing thoughtful, intelligent people talking about it as not so much an option but an inevitability. Matt Ocko. Matt Bruenig. Other people not named Matt. I heartily recommend this excellent Gizmodo column by Dave Levitan for more on the subject:

The latest IPCC report found that the world could reach 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming by 2030. Keeping it from soaring beyond that level and into the realm of the catastrophic “would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” Does that sound like something humans are remotely planning on doing, given what we have seen to this point? I hate to borrow from a fictional version of Mark Zuckerberg, but if we were going to solve climate change, we would have solved climate change.

He’s right. Doing nothing is not an option, or, at least, for nations like Bangladesh, it’s not going to stay an option for long. Doing the right thing as a species appears not to be an option either. That leaves us with this ugly hack. Sorry. On behalf of engineers everywhere, I apologize. But sometimes our managers leave us with no other choice.