Month: October 2018

Portal is not Facebook’s Echo Show. Call it a case of convergent evolution, wherein two companies arrived at similar looking products after approaching hardware from different angles. The problem Facebook sought to solve is one of face to face communication. It’s an attempt to remove the device from the act of video chatting.

That Facebook, Amazon and Google’s smart display partners all ended up at a similar place is no coincidence, of course. Like those smart displays, the home teleconferencing device is essentially a propped up tablet. With Portal, however, the system takes two distinct form factors.

There’s the standard Portal, which looks quite a bit like Lenovo’s recently released Google Assistant Smart Display, and the more compelling Portal Plus. That larger model, with a 15 inch display (1920 x 1080) brings to mind recent enterprise attempts at telepresence robotics. The base is stationary here, but the display orientation can be swiveled into landscape or portrait mode.

What’s most remarkable, of course, is that this is the first true Facebook-produced piece of consumer electronics. It was never really a question of whether Facebook would create its own hardware — it was more a question of when, and what shape it would take. Unlike feeds, text chats and likes, video is the first real aspect of the company’s social platform that can justify a standalone device.

During a meeting with TechCrunch, the company cited this 2015 piece as an inspiration for the product.  In it, Tim Urban lays out some pretty stark infographics pertaining to his own mortality. The piece also breaks down how much more face-to-face time the writer will ultimately spend with his parents, then in their mid-60s.

It’s kind of a bummer, honestly. Don’t read it on a plane. But here’s the takeaway:

“It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93 percent of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end.”

 

I know, I know.

Portal’s creation dates back to the foundation of the hardware team two years ago. The team’s first product manager Rafa Camargo says there was some back and forth regarding whether it made sense for Facebook to finally launch first-party hardware in earnest.

“We spent six months trying to figure out how we expand the platforms Facebook has and toying with the idea of what we can do if we own the whole thing,” the former Googler tells TechCrunch. “Otherwise, what’s the point of hardware?”

The idea initial spark for Portal was struck a year and a half ago, leading Facebook to build out the Building 8 product team. In the intervening months, speculation has ramped up that the company was building either a Facebook Phone or Amazon Echo competitor. The latter, of course, was much closer to the truth (a least for now), though in some ways, Portal and Portal Plus are their own beasts entirely.

Video chat is far and away the focus here — and the implementation in the demos we’ve seen are actually pretty remarkable. In fact, the product is so focused on that singular feature that much of the rest of the product has languished in comparison.

Portal is not going to be the next centerpiece of your next smart home, for example. And the UI is pretty barebones and the app store is utterly lacking. There’s no web browser, and in spite of the large screen, you can’t watch videos through Netflix or Hulu or YouTube.  In fact, ironically, this is one of the few pieces of consumer hardware on the market that won’t let you access your Facebook feed.

Of course, your Facebook account is still the key to logging in. By default (using the assorted array of algorithms), Portal will serve off up half a dozen people as your inner circle of communications. You can always tweak that list, however. Calling is pretty much what we’ve come to expect from these sorts of devices, albeit without the kind of overkill UX touches that many chat apps have.

It’s a full screen video, with a small overlay of what’s happening on your end. What’s most remarkable is the combination of AI and camera tricks that help the product focus on its subject. Portal identifies and tracks people, shifting the camera’s framing accordingly.

Facebook actually worked with a professional cinematographer there, to ensure smother transitions, panning the camera to track and zooming in an out (up to 10x) to fit as many people in frame as possible. The camera movement takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s well done and surprisingly smooth.

The other big aspect of the video is shared experiences. The simplest is using music apps like Spotify and Pandora to listen to songs simultaneously with someone however far away. While playing, there’s a visual overlay of the song, and the volume can be adjusted on either side of the conversation. There are also some early AR experiences, including Instagram filters and an adorable feature called Storytime, which feeds the narrator the text of a storybook via teleprompter, while overlaying visual aspects from the story.

All of this is very early stages, of course. Facebook has been demoing the device in private trials for roughly nine months with around 1,000 users. Part of that process is soliciting feedback for new features. At launch, the feature set will be fairly barebones, with additions rolling out over time.

The company isn’t disclosing a lot of information from a hardware perspective. The Plus has a 1080p screen, while the standard Portal is 720. There are decent sets of speakers on-board, along with a four mic array, which allows the systems to utilize Alexa for the assistant heavy lifting.

There is some native voice control, including the “Hey Portal” wake word, though interaction with the product is split between that and the touchscreen. There’s also an on-board button to switch off the camera when not in use, along with a lens cap for good measure.

The most surprising thing about the product (beyond its sheer existence) might actually be its price. The larger model runs $349 and the smaller is $199, putting it $20 below the Echo Show. There’s also a bundle that will get you two portals for $299. The device is clearly something of a loss leader for Facebook as the company explores hardware as an avenue for further engaging users.

London ‘proptech’ startup Goodlord, which offers cloud-based software to help estate agents, landlords and tenants manage the rental process, has raised £7 million in Series B funding. The round is led by Finch Capital, with participation from existing investor Rocket Internet/GFC, and is roughly equal in size to Goodlord’s Series A in 2017. However, it would be fair to say a lot has happened since then.

In January, we reported that Goodlord had let go of nearly 40 employees, and that co-founder and CEO Richard White was leaving the company (we also speculated that the company’s CTO had departed, too, which proved to be correct). In signs of a potential turnaround, Goodlord then announced a new CEO later that month: serial entrepreneur and investor William Reeve (pictured), a veteran of the London tech scene, would now head up the property technology startup.

As I wrote at the time, Reeve’s appointment could be viewed as somewhat of a coup for Goodlord and showed how seriously its backers — which, along with Rocket Internet (and now Finch), also includes LocalGlobe and Ribbit Capital — were treating their investment and the turn-around/refocus of the company. With today’s Series B and news that Reeve has appointed a new CTO, Donovan Frew, that effort seems to be paying off.

Founded in 2014, unlike other startups in the rental market space that want to essentially destroy traditional brick ‘n mortar letting agents with an online equivalent, Goodlord’s Software-as-a-Service is designed to support all stakeholders, including traditional high-street letting agents, as well as landlords and, of course, tenants.

The Goodlord SaaS enables letting agents to “digitize” the moving-in process, including utilizing e-signatures and collecting rental payments online. In addition, the company sells landlord insurance, and has been working on other related products, such as rental guarantees, and “tenant passports.”

If Goodlord can reach enough scale, it wants to let tenants easily take their rental transaction history and landlord references with them when moving from one rental property to another as proof that they are a trustworthy tenant.

Meanwhile, the company says new funding will be used to build new products, grow its customer base, and invest in the further development of its proprietary technology to continue to make “renting simple and more transparent for letting agents, tenants and landlords”.

Last year, retail e-commerce sales worldwide reached $2.3 trillion, a 24.8 percent increase over the previous year, according to eMarketer. A growing percentage of that spend was being captured by startups with strong online identities that are savvy about collecting and analyzing their customer data.

Involved with many of them, from the eyewear company Warby Parker to the cosmetics startup Glossier to the athleisure brand Outside Voices, is Forerunner Ventures, a seven-year-old, San Francisco-based venture firm that has built its own name around expertise in e-commerce — and which sees a giant opportunity to fund many more brands.

Forerunner suddenly has much more capital to chase those opportunities, too, having just closed its fourth fund with $360 million in capital commitments. That’s almost exactly triple the size of its previous, $122, third fund, closed in 2016.

That investors are eager to give Forerunner more money to deploy isn’t surprising. In addition to a strong portfolio of still-private companies, which also includes the vitamin company RItual, the luggage company Away, and the men’s wellness brand Hims, the firm has already seen a number of big exits in recent years.

One of its very first checks, in fact, went to Dollar Shave Club, which sold to Unilever for $1 billion in 2016. Roughly one month later, Wal-mart spent $3.3 billion to acquire another of its startups, the web retailer Jet.com. Meanwhile, last year, a third investment, the menswear brand Bonobos, sold for $310 million, again to Wal-mart.

The firm — which was somewhat famously founded by former equity research analyst Kirsten Green and largely co-run by general partner Eurie Kim — also made a high-profile hire four months ago. It poached longtime VC Brian O’Malley, who’d spent the previous four years with Accel and who co-invested alongside Forerunner over the years, including in Away and Dollar Shave Club, as well as the booking platform HotelTonight and the home goods store Serena & Lily.

Not only does the move underscore that Forerunner is maturing, it signals a bigger push into software-as-a-service businesses, where O’Malley has been active, including by leading investments into companies like Duetto, which makes pricing, revenue management, and forecasting software for hotels and casinos worldwide.

Indeed, on a call with Green on Friday about the firm’s rapid growth since closing its first institutional fund with $40 million six years ago, she talked about Forerunner’s interest in business-to-business opportunities that support the firm’s broader thesis of focusing on the consumer.

She pointed, as an example, to Faire, an online marketplace that connects independent retailers directly with product manufacturers, so they can place wholesale orders and track shipments online, as well as return the items that don’t sell in their stores.

Another related bet is Inturn, which helps move excess inventory. Specifically, its subscription-based software pulls inventory data from whatever legacy systems a manufacturer or retailer may be operating; it then creates detailed product information about whatever is “excess” and shows it to off-price chains and other outlets and helps facilitates its sale.

Forerunner even has a bet on a Canadian robotics company, Attabotics, which is focused on warehousing and fulfillment.

Green also talked broadly about being able to write bigger checks and to better support some of Forerunner’s many breakout companies. But as she explained it, the firm plans to do little else differently going forward. If anything, she suggested, it will simply be capitalizing on the know-how about startups it has gleaned by working in the trenches with so many new brands over the last decade.

“Throughout my career, I’ve looked to understand cycles,” said Green. “Generally, I think there are micro cycles, where there’s lots of newness happening and high experimentation, and I think [toward that end] mobile is a new platform that’s just gaining momentum. You also have emerging areas like blockchain and AR and VR that aren’t mainstream and it’s not obvious when they’ll bust into the market in a big way but that stand to drive new waves of newness.”

Still, she added, “I’m feeling there’s also an opportunity now to leverage what’s been tested and tried over many years, things that are done with the benefit of perspective. We — and many of the founders we know, too — now have the benefit of having some lessons learned.”

Pictured above: Forerunner General Partners Green, O’Malley, and Kim.

With the original Echo Show, Amazon added a new dimension to the smart speaker. To critics, the device was little more than a station tablet. For Amazon, however, the product unlocked a new vertical in the rapidly expanding category. The day to usefulness wasn’t always clear, but the potential certainly was, as Amazon and the competition looked to corner the smart home market.

Like most of the company’s first generation products, however, the hardware wasn’t great. The first Show was big and clunky. It looked dated before it even arrived in living rooms and kitchens. But it got the job done.

While the company hasn’t released sales figures for the product, the first gen clearly sold briskly in its early days, according to rankings. The numbers were ultimately hobbled by a war with Google that resulted in YouTube being pulled from the platform, but on a whole, the device appears to be a hit.

It’s already inspired a number of copycats. In January, Google announced a new Smart Display category relying on third parties to product their own Assistant-powered take on the device. And later this week, it’s expected to introduce its own competitor, the Home Hub. It’s fitting, then, that the second-gen Show bears Google’s unmistakable influence. Heck, it’s kind of theme in this latest batch of Echo devices.

There’s little question that the new show is much better looking product than its predecessor. The big, thick, plasticky look has been traded in for something a bit more homey, with a softer, fabric covering. The front, which was previously home to both display and speaker, is now all screen — meaning those tablet comparisons aren’t going away any time soon.

Still, from a pure design perspective, Lenovo’s Smart Display is the one to beat. It’s still far and away the best looking of the bunch — though the aforementioned Home Hub could give it a run for its money in the near future.

The design choice means there’s a lot more room for screen, which has been increased from seven to 10.1 inches (with a still fairly sizable bezel). That extra real estate makes the product a more compelling offering for watching short videos or episodic TV shows (I don’t know that I’d recommend it for a full film just yet) and finally offers enough space for something like a browser to make sense on the product.

The speaker, meanwhile, has been moved to the rear of the device. It’s a decision that makes sense from an aesthetic perspective, but is a bit less than practical. When listening to music while writing this review, I found myself actually flipping it around.

Sound quality has been notably improved with improved drivers and Dolby bass, but things get a bit muffled when faced away from you. The bass is also a bit too powerful for its own good here, contributing to a muddying of the sound quality. Thankfully, Alexa now understands you when you ask her to turn down the bass.

Things improve a bit when you place it around six inches from a wall, reflecting the sound back at you. Of course, not every home set up can accommodate that orientation. Either way, I wouldn’t recommend looking to the Show as your primary music listening device. Apple and Google’s high end speakers simply sound better — or build your own using the various modular pieces the company announced at its last event.

With a larger display, the new Show demands touch. Amazon clearly recognized this during the redesign. While, like its predecessor, it’s designed to be voice-first device touch-based interactions are more prevalent here.

Exhibit A is the addition of Firefox. It’s a bit of a strange one. You can call it up with an, “Alexa, open Firefox,” but actually browsing the web is a bit trickier. There’s no skill yet for, say, “open TechCrunch.com in Firefox.” Rather, you’ll have to open Firefox and either type the URL with two fingers, or click the microphone icon to speak it.

It’s a nice option certainly, if a bit clunky. Also, there’s no multitouch pinch to zoom here — in fact, so far as I can tell, there’s no way to zoom in at all. What the browser does afford, however, is a workaround for YouTube. Say “Alexa, open YouTube,” and the Show will offer you the choice of watching content in either Firefox or the Silk browser. Sure, it’s not ideal compared to a native app, but until the companies kiss and make up, or, more likely, Amazon launches its own competing service, it will have to do.

The other big news here is a bit of a no-brainer. After bringing smart home hub functionality to the Echo line with the Plus, Amazon has done the same with the Show. The smart screen now features a Zigbee hub inside. Connecting devices is pretty straightforward — just put them in pairing mode and say “Alexa, discover my devices.” If everything goes right, the whole process should take under a minute.

Thankfully, an app redesign has arrived alongside the new devices, so those smart devices can be accessed on your mobile device, along with the Show. The app also lets users routines around groups of devices, so you can, say, turn up the lights, turn on the coffee and get the day’s news (shudder) with an “Alexa, good morning.”

The new Show is nice upgrade over its predecessor. It’s better looking, has a bigger screen and improved (if backwards) speakers, while smart home hub functionality and last year’s addition of security camera monitoring make it a control panel for the smart home. The ball is in your court, Google.

An attempt to bring a class-action style litigation in the UK to claim up to £3BN in compensation from Google for ignoring iPhone user privacy settings has been blocked after the High Court judge ruled the case cannot proceed.

The case pertains to actions by Google between 2011 and 2012 when it allegedly harvested personal data from Safari users without their permission, via the use of tracking cookies.

In the US, Google settled with the FTC over the same cookie tracking issuing — agreeing in 2012 to pay $22.5M to settle the charge that it bypassed Safari’s privacy settings to serve targeted ads to consumers.

In the UK a civil legal action was filed last year by one named iPhone user, Richard Lloyd — the former director of consumer group, Which? — who was seeking to represent millions of UK users, whose Safari settings the complaint alleged were similarly ignored by Google’s tracking technologies, via a representative legal action.

Lawyers for the claimants argued that sensitive personal data such as iPhone users’ political affiliation, sexual orientation, financial situation and more had been gathered by Google via a ‘Safari Workaround’ that operated between August 2011 and February 2012, and used for targeted advertising without their consent.

The suit sought compensation for Google’s improper use of people’s data — with a proposed amount of £750 per claimant, which could have resulted in a bill of up to £3BN for the company (based on representing ~4.4 million UK iPhone users).

While the judge did not disagree “it is arguable that Google’s alleged role in the collection, collation, and use of data obtained via the Safari Workaround was wrongful, and a breach of duty”, the ruling was based on legal questions related to the merit of the case’s compensation claims, and whether the court should allow a representative action in this case.

In a judgement issued today Mr Justice Warby ruled that the claimants had not been able to demonstrate a basis for bringing a compensation claim.

UK law in this area requires claimants to be able to demonstrate they suffered damage as a result of violation of the relevant data protection rules. And in this instance the claimants had not been able to show damage, the judge ruled.

“I do not believe that the authorities show that a person whose information has been acquired or used without consent invariably suffers compensatable harm, either by virtue of the wrong itself, or the interference with autonomy that it involves. Not everything that happens to a person without their prior consent causes significant or any distress. Not all such events are even objectionable, or unwelcome. Some people enjoy a surprise party,” wrote Warby in the judgement, going on to state that “the question of whether or not damage has been sustained by an individual as a result of the non-consensual use of personal data about them must depend on the facts of the case”.

“The bare facts pleaded in this case, which are in no way individualised, do not in my judgment assert any case of harm to the value of any claimant’s right of autonomy that amounts to “damage” within the meaning of DPA s 13,” he concluded.

On a second legal point, the judge also ruled that the case would not have been allowed to proceed as a class-action style suit, asserting that “the essential requirements for a representative action are absent” — owing to individuals in the group not all having the “same interest” in the claim, and the difficulty of reliably defining a class for the purposes of this case.

In a statement after the ruling was announced, Google said: “The privacy and security of our users is extremely important to us. This claim is without merit, and we’re pleased the Court has dismissed it.”

A couple of years ago YC-backed RankScience, which offers AI-enhanced SEO split-testing, put a few SEO experts’ noses out of joint when the fledgling startup brashly talked about replacing human expertise with automation.

Two years on its pitch has mellowed, with the team saying their self-service platform is “augmenting human SEO ability rather than replacing them”.

The startup has also — finally — closed a seed round, announcing $1.8M led by Initialized Capital, along with Adam D’Angelo, Michael Seibel, BoxGroup, Liquid2 Ventures, FundersClub, and Jenny 8 Lee participating.

The new roster of investors join a list of prior backers that includes Y Combinator, 500 Startups, Christina Cacioppo, and Jack Groetzinger.

So what took them so long? Founder Ryan Bednar tells TechCrunch they wanted to take their time with the seed, rather than raise more money than they needed — a position that was possible thanks to already being profitable at YC Demo Day.

“I admit that this is unusual,” he says of the slow seed, though he also says they did raise a “small amount” after demo day, before filling out the rest this month.

“I saw many YC batchmates raising massive rounds pre product-market-fit, which can end up being a mistake,” he adds. “We probably could have raised a few million at Demo Day but ultimately didn’t feel we were ready for it. I didn’t know what I would spend the money on, and we were growing without it, so we chose not to. I wanted to raise capital when I felt we were ready to use it for growth, and now’s that time.”

Bednar also says he is “selective” when it comes to investors — and “specifically” wanted to work with Initialized, saying he’s “known Garry and Alexis personally for years, and trust that they would support us in building a long-term scalable business”.

Commenting on the funding to TechCrunch, Initialized Capital’s Alexis Ohanian tells us: “Even though so many businesses depend on traffic from search, it’s a challenge for them to be data-driven about SEO. RankScience makes it easy to test changes to your website that can lift search traffic. They also automate a growing number of technical SEO tasks, which otherwise would take engineers away from building product and infrastructure, which is really exciting.”

RankScience plans to use the fresh funding to hire more AI and machine learning engineers, with headcount growth targeted at its SF office.

While the founders have stepped back from pronouncing ‘the death of the SEO expert’, they are still touting the power of automation AI for SEO — noting how, after crawling a customer’s site/s, the software automatically proposes “SEO enhancements and experiments” to customers — for “one-click [human] approval”.

It also includes what Bendar bills as a “self-driving car mode” — where the tech will deploy the touted “enhancements and experiments” without customer approval. But he concedes it’s not for all RankScience users.

“For about half of our customers, we’re their only SEO vendor so we automate SEO services 100% for them, and for the other half, our software augments human SEO ability, either from in-house marketers or agencies,” he says, explaining how the team has evolved their thinking on automation vs human agency and expertise.

“When we launched we didn’t think hard enough about what sorts of controls SEO managers at larger websites would want, and we tried to automate everything without giving marketers enough control. This was a mistake and we’ve worked hard on correcting it.

“This should have been obvious but it turns out that SEO managers are highly selective about what sorts of HTML changes our software might make to their webpages. So we’ve spent the past year building tools to give SEO marketers complete control over everything our software does, and also advanced editors and tools so they can create their own SEO enhancements and run SEO split tests through the platform.”

For those who make use of RankScience’s ‘Self-Driving Car Mode’ the software is replacing SEO staff “completely”, but he adds: “This works especially well for startups and medium size businesses. But SEO is such a multifaceted problem, we want to give larger companies with marketing teams complete control over our platform, and so we work with both types of customers.”

As well as (finally) closing out its seed round now, RankScience is also launching a new self-service platform for startups and SMEs — touting greater controls.

On the customer front, Bednar says they have “hundreds” of sites on the platform now — and are serving “hundreds of millions of page views per month”. Cumulatively he says they’ve deployed “millions” of SEO split tests at this point.

“Our customers run the gamut from startups just getting started with SEO to publicly-traded companies,” he continues. “Our best industries are SaaS, ecommerce, marketplaces, healthcare, publishing, and location-based sites.

“We’ve recently been working with more consumer goods brands, and we’ve also launched a partnership program so that we can work with SEO and Digital Marketing Agencies and independent consultants.”

He says the vast majority of RankScience users are based in the US at this stage but adds that Europe is a “growing market”.

In terms of competition, Bednar name-checks the likes of Moz, Conductor (acquired this year by WeWork), BloomReach and BrightEdge — so it is swimming in a pool with some very big fish.

“Most of these products are more akin to advanced SEO analytics suites, and we differ in that RankScience is 100% focused on data-driven SEO automation,” he says, fleshing out the differences and RankScience’s edge, as he sees it. “Our software doesn’t just tell you what changes to make to your site to increase search traffic, it actually makes the changes for you. (Now with more controls!)”

WeWork has partnered with Lemonade to provide renters insurance to WeLive members.

WeLive is the residential offering from WeWork, offering members a fully-furnished apartment, complete with amenities like housekeeping, mailroom, and on-site laundry, on a flexible rental schedule. In other words, bicoastal workers or generally nomadic individuals can rent a short-term living space without worrying about all the extras.

As part of that package, WeLive is now offering Lemonade renters insurance to new and existing members.

WeLive currently has two locations — one in New York and one in D.C. — collectively representing more than 400 units. WeWork says that both units are nearly at capacity. The company has plans to open a third location in Seattle Washington by Spring 2020.

Lemonade, meanwhile, is an up-and-coming insurance startup that is rethinking the centuries-old industry. The company’s first big innovation was the digitization of getting insurance. The company uses a chatbot to lead prospective customers through the process in under a minute.

The second piece of Lemoande’s strategy is rooted in the business model. Unlike incumbent insurance providers, Lemonade takes its profit up-front, raking away a percentage of customers’ monthly payments. The rest, however, is set aside to fulfill claims. Whatever goes unclaimed at the end of the year is donated to the charity of each customer’s choice.

To date, Lemonade has raised a total of $180 million. WeWork, on the other hand, has raised just over $9 billion, with a reported valuation as high as $35 billion.

Of course, part of the reason for that lofty valuation is the fact that WeWork is a real estate behemoth, with Re/Code reporting that the company is Manhattan’s second biggest private office tenant. But beyond sheer square footage, WeWork has spent the past few years filling its arsenal with various service providers for its services store.

With 175,000 members (as of end of 2017, so that number is likely much higher now), WeWork has a considerable userbase with which it can negotiate deals with service providers, from enterprise software makers to… well, insurance providers.

Lemonade is likely just the beginning of WeWork’s stretch into developing a suite of services and partnerships for its residential members.

A UN report compiled by a coalition of international climate experts has warned that “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” are required if global warming is to be limited to just 1.5°C.

The report also sets out some of the dire consequences for both humanity and life on Earth if that threshold is exceeded, and points out that, conversely, limiting global warming would give people and ecosystems “more room to adapt and remain below relevant risk thresholds”.

Decisions made by world leaders today are critical in ensuring a safe and sustainable world for everyone, the authors warn.

“One of the key messages that comes out very strongly from this report is that we are already seeing the consequences of 1°C of global warming through more extreme weather, rising sea levels and diminishing Arctic sea ice, among other changes,” said Panmao Zhai, co-chair of one of the report’s scientific working groups.

“The good news is that some of the kinds of actions that would be needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C are already underway around the world, but they would need to accelerate,” added Valerie Masson-Delmotte, co-chair of the same group.

To limit the damage caused by climate change, global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050 — which means that any remaining emissions would need to be balanced by removing CO2 from the air.

If world leaders do not succeeding in keeping warming to 1.5°C humanity will face a range of far more severe impacts, with a 2°C rise meaning an extra 10cm rise in sea levels by 2100 — which would inundate scores more coastal cities and low lying areas, increasing the amount of people who would be displaced in future.

Climate-related risks to health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security, and economic growth are also projected to be more severe at the higher temperature rise.

While the report says that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would reduce risks to marine biodiversity, fisheries, and ecosystems, and their functions and services to humans.

Even with a 1.5°C rise coral reefs would still be severely impacted, declining by 70-90% — but virtually all (>99%) reefs would be lost with a 2°C rise.

While the likelihood of an Arctic Ocean free of sea ice in summer would be once per century with global warming of 1.5°C, compared with at least once per decade with 2°C, according to the report.

Likewise, on land, impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems, including species loss and extinction, are projected to be lower at 1.5°C of global warming vs 2°C.

Impacts associated with other biodiversity-related risks — such as forest fires, and the spread of invasive species — would also be less severe if climate change can be contained to a smaller rise.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) compiled the Special Report on Global Warming in response to an invitation from the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change when 195 global leaders adopted the 2015 Paris Agreement to tackle climate change — an accord which President Trump turned his back on last year when he withdrew the US from the agreement.

The report will be a key scientific input for the Katowice Climate Change Conference, which takes place in Poland in December, when other heads of state will meet to review the Paris Agreement.

The group of 91 authors and review editors from 40 countries who prepared the report argue that keeping global temperature rise to 1.5°C would also support a more sustainable and equitable society.

“Limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared with 2°C would reduce challenging impacts on ecosystems, human health and well-being, making it easier to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals,” said Priyardarshi Shukla, co-chair of IPCC Working Group III, in a statement.

“Every extra bit of warming matters, especially since warming of 1.5°C or higher increases the risk associated with long-lasting or irreversible changes, such as the loss of some ecosystems,” added Hans-Otto Pörtner, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group II.

Any ‘overshoot’ of 1.5°C would mean a greater reliance on techniques that remove CO2 from the air to return global temperature to below 1.5°C by 2100.

But policymakers are warned that the effectiveness of such techniques are unproven at large scale and some may carry significant risks for sustainable development.

Meme via GIPHY

Klarna, the payments startup out of Sweden that helps online shoppers arrange for financing at the point of sale, has picked up another strategic investor: fashion retailer H&M is taking a $20 million stake in the business, and with it, the two plan to build an “omni-channel” payments service across H&M’s physical stores — which span 4,800 stores in 70 markets — as well as its online storefronts.

Klarna says the deal will cover “frictionless” in-store, mobile and online payments across the company’s whole footprint, a better delivery and return process, and more flexible payment options, including “try before you buy” pay later services, to be delivered through H&M’s app and its Club loyalty program. The first phase of the partnership will go live in 2019 in H&M’s home market of Sweden before a global roll out.

The companies are not disclosing the valuation with this investment, but a source close to the deal says that the $20 million equates to “much less than one percent of the company.” For some context, Klarna was last valued at $2.5 billion in 2017, a year when it made a series of investment announcements. They included a $225 million stake from Klarna’s first fashion world investor, Anders Holch Povlsen (owner of fashion conglomerate Bestseller); a strategic stake from credit card giant Visa; and a $250 million investment from PE firm Permira. (Previous investors have included Sequoia, Northzone and IVP.)

We’ve heard that Klarna has also been eyeing up an IPO as a further liquidity event although a spokesperson declined to comment on this when asked today.

For H&M, the move aims to give the company a stronger push into digital sales. Some high-street retailers have made online, and specifically mobile, a cornerstone of their sales — and there are, indeed, a number of businesses that have built presences only online such as Farfetch, Matches, and ASOS.

“We are impressed with what Klarna has achieved to date and now we will work together to elevate the modern shopping experience,” said Karl-J​ohan Persson, CEO H&M, in a statement. “This strategic partnership between H&M group and Klarna is based on a joint relentless focus on creating great customer experiences.”

H&M has put the bulk of its investment and focus on its physical stores over the years, and so some of that wave of buying trends — including not just the most cutting-edge web expereinces, but also being able to pay at a physical cash register using your mobile phone — has potentially passed it by.

It’s not clear how much of an impact ignoring newer sales channels and having better digital experiences has had on the company, but H&M has seen a big drop in its share price in the last year, so this investment, and the fruits of it, could potentially help shore up confidence, and perhaps sales, at the business at a crucial time.

“We at H&M are very excited about this partnership. We want to make it possible for customers to move freely between the various channels and choose how they want to shop and experience our offering online and in store,” said Daniel Claesson, Head of Business Development H&M group, in a statement. “This partnership will bring tailor-made payment solutions to our customers and accommodate evolving shopping patterns and needs. This includes the possibility to ‘try before you buy’ which is very relevant to online fashion retail today and to pay with their mobile phone directly through the H&M app both instore and online.”

Klarna had already cut its teeth in working with retailers, including Povlsen’s Bestseller-owned range of brands, as well as Ikea and ASOS, and so it is in that regard a safe bet for H&M to try something new. Klarna itself started out focusing on financing at the point of sale, and this is still what it’s best known for, but in 2017 it also obtained a full banking license and so it’s been moving into more financial services around that (including on credit products with Visa), so this opens the door to working on a number of other services with its customers.

E-commerce, however, is still a very small percentage of all retail, accounting for only around 10 percent this year in developed markets like the US, and far lower in other places. So there is a long way to go tapping the market and building services for legacy brick-and-mortar businesses, an opportunity Klarna has been tackling.

“Retail is changing, and the future of fashion retail is high tech powering high touch experiences for customers. Regardless of how and when customers want to shop, we need to be there for them,” said Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO and co-founder of Klarna, in a statement. “​Customers will no longer be forgiving of unnecessary complexity or when their retail experience does not leverage the insight available to make their engagement smart, personal and easy.”