Year: 2018

The story of the game Star Citizen and Cloud Imperium, the company developing it, is almost too ludicrous to believe: a crowdfunding effort to create a space sim of unparalleled size and realism, raising hundreds of millions, with backers paying thousands for ships and gear in a game that’s years from release. Yet it’s real enough that it just pulled in $42 million in private funding to help bring it closer to release.

Star Citizen began as the brainchild of Chris Roberts, architect of the Wing Commander series and other well-received space games. His idea was to crowdfund the team’s next game, and did so in 2012; the money started rolling in, and it never really stopped. Nor has the game ceased to grow in its ambitions, adding things like entire planets to the lineup that seem, on their face, somewhat insane.

There’s no shortage of histories of the game and its developers out there, so for our purposes let it suffice to say that over the last six years the company has raised $211 million, the vast majority of which comes from gamers “pledging” anywhere from a few bucks to thousands of dollars for all manner of things related to the title. Early access to builds, exclusive ships, testing new content, etc.

A huge amount of work has been done on the game, so this isn’t just a colossal con, though there are plenty who think the game, and its first-person shooter counterpart Squadron 42, can’t possibly ever fulfill its ambitions and justify the money people have put into it.

That doesn’t seem to be the opinion of Clive Calder, founder of Zomba and producer in a variety of entertainment formats, whom Roberts met during a clandestine campaign to solicit funding.

Roberts, who writes the story in one of his candid messages to the project’s fanbase, had decided a while back that he didn’t want to use pledged funds for marketing purposes — at least not the kind of marketing blitz AAA games tend to require for a successful global release. So he went looking for investment, and found Calder, with whom he “got on like a house on fire.”

Calder’s family office agreed to invest $46 million for a 10 percent stake in Cloud Imperium, which all told puts it near a half-billion valuation. One may very well question the sanity of such a valuation for a company that has not yet shipped an actual product — working prototypes, sure, but not a completed game — but hell, at least they’re making something people are excited about. That’s got to be worth a couple bucks.

Cloud Imperium gains two new board members from outside, though Roberts, who commands the kind of loyalty that only decades in an industry can create, was quick to point out that “control of the company and the board still firmly stays with myself as Chairman, CEO and majority shareholder.”

In another act of not exactly radical but not legally required transparency, the company also posted an outline of the company’s financials over the last 6 years. Unsurprisingly, the company has been investing most of its cash into game development in the form of salaries, contracts, and overhead; a non-trivial amount has gone towards “publishing operations, community, events and marketing,” which with a game as community-focused as Star Citizen is not surprising.

The company has grown steadily, adding a hundred people a year or so to a present size of 464 — which is the kind of size you’d expect on a AAA game like Assassin’s Creed or Red Dead Redemption. Even more would be added on as temporary artists, actors, and so on.

I’m sure it has escaped no one that pledges appear to have peaked, though if they remain steady then the company can clearly the company will have enough to continue operations if it doesn’t expand. But one does also see perhaps a secondary motive in seeking investment from outside the community. At some point people are going to want a game.

To that end Squadron 42, at least, is scheduled for release in Q2 2020 — though backers and critics will both chuckle a little at the idea that Cloud Imperium will be able to hit those goals. The games, infamously, were originally slated for release long ago. But the scope of the project has grown since its conception and although some no doubt would rather be playing the completed game today, they may very well find that good things come to those who wait. And wait. And wait…

Chatty gamers are apparently worth billions.

Discord, the gaming chat startup with more than 200 million active users, announced Friday that it had secured $150 million in funding at a $2.05 billion valuation. The round was led by Greenoaks Capital with participation from Firstmark, Tencent, IVP, Index Ventures and Technology Opportunity Partners.

The company announced this past April that they had raised $50 million in funding at a $1.65 billion valuation. With this latest bout of cash, Discord has now pulled in more than $280 million in funding.

The influx of new money comes as the chat startup goes full speed ahead on one of its most ambitious offshoots to date, taking on games giant Valve with a gaming store meant to rival the ubiquitous Steam store. The company launched a global beta of the Discord Store in October; they recently announced that starting in 2019, they will be establishing a revenue split of 90/10 for developers that are self-publishing titles on the store, a margin much friendlier to indie devs than the 70/30 split on Steam.

The company’s bread-and-butter remains its chat service, which brings voice and text communications to gamers looking to talk with teammates and fellow enthusiasts during and outside of gameplay. Discord isn’t the only service that offers this capability, but it is definitely one of the most popular with hundreds of millions of users coming to the app every month.

We chatted with CEO Jason Citron at our most recent Disrupt SF event, where he talked about the opportunities available in the online games sales market and what challenges the company had up ahead.

For more than 60 years, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, better known as NORAD, and its predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) have tracked Santa’s flight around the world on December 24.

And it will continue this year, even if there’s a government shutdown, the operations center said Friday in a tweet.

The NORAD Santa tracker is supported by some 1,500 volunteers who staff telephones and computers to answer calls and e-mails from children (and adults) from around the world, according to NORAD.

People can get live updates through the NORAD Tracks Santa website, which is available in seven languages, over telephone lines and by e-mail. There are even live updates on Twitter.

You can follow along here too.

The tradition all began over a misprinted phone number in an advertisement in the local paper. The ad said, “Hey, Kiddies! Call me direct and be sure and dial the correct number.” When a young child called that December 24, in 1955, it went to the CONAD operations center in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Colonel Harry Shoup, who was on duty that night, answered the phone. It wouldn’t be the first child who called that night. Shoup had his operators find the location of Santa Claus and reported it to every child who phoned in, kicking off what would become an annual tradition.

Roughly four months after JD.com’s billionaire CEO Richard Liu was arrested and later released by Minneapolis police on suspicion of alleged sexual misconduct, local authorities say they will not be charging him in a sexual misconduct case. In a statement, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said it was not possible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the charges brought against Liu.

“As is the case in many sexual assault incidents, it was a complicated situation,” said Freeman in the release. “It is also similar to other sexual assault cases with the suspect maintaining the sex was consensual.”

An attorney for the accuser — a Chinese undergraduate who was studying at the University of Minnesota this fall — warned in an interview with the WSJ that “her story will be told.”

According to audio recordings reviewed by the WSJ, the woman told police that she attended a dinner with Liu and his associates on August 30th, and that Liu raped her in her home afterward.

JD.com, one of China’s largest online retailers, has from the outset called the accusations unsubstantiated, with Liu denying all wrongdoing.

My podcasting rig is simple: Two microphones, a Tascam recorder, two XLR cables. I’ve upgraded things a bit in the past year — improved the mics, bought some foam windscreens and bought a pair of tabletop, foldable mic stands. But the principle is the same: take nothing I can’t fit into a laptop sleeve.

It’s served me pretty well in the five years I’ve been doing my show. While friends were building soundproof posting studios in their homes, I went with a rig I could take with me. It’s a lot easier to ask someone to be on your show if you’re able to go to them.

Here’s a picture I took of comedian Hannibal Buress after recording an upcoming episode in my hotel room in Lagos, Nigeria. That’s my setup right there. It’s sitting atop my rolling luggage, which is turned upside down on a small hotel coffee table. Improvisation is key.

There are trade-offs, of course. Sound is a big one. The mics themselves are pretty crisp, but ambient noise is an issue. I’ve recorded a bunch of these in cafes, bars and restaurants. I tell myself it’s part of the charm. And, of course, with a Tascam, you don’t have the same sort of sophisticated control you get with a board.

Perhaps I’ve always secretly fantasized about what a home studio might look like. Cost has always been a factor, of course. These things add up like crazy. Also, the barrier of entry is needlessly complex. A handful of companies have looked to capitalize on the increasingly profitable world of non-professional podcasts. Blue has produced some pretty compelling USB-based stuff. For those who want to record multiple guests in the same room, however, things start to get much trickier.

I jumped at the chance to try out the Rodecaster Pro. From the looks of it, it just might be the ideal product to help home podcasters scratch that itch. The product is essentially a six-channel soundboard with self-contained production capabilities. The idea is to just record everything live to a single track that can be uploaded directly to your podcast server of choice.

That includes everything from live mixing to an octet of sound pads you can use to trigger music beds and sound effects. Better yet, you can patch people in remotely by connecting a smartphone via hardwire or Bluetooth.

It’s a really lovely piece of hardware. I showed it to a few folks during setup, and everyone was impressed by the look of the thing, from the pro knobs to the brightly illuminated sound pads with customizable colors.

There’s a small touchscreen display at the top of the board that serves both as a way to gauge levels and navigate various settings. Essentially it serves as a way to bypass the computer entirely, once you’ve finished the setup process. The Rodecaster operates on a similar principle as much of anchor.fm’s offerings, giving users the path of least resistance to bringing a podcast to life.

It’s an admirable goal, especially in the world of podcasting, where content democratization is supposed to be a guiding principle. And certainly setup is painless, so far as mixing boards go. I had to fine-tune and troubleshoot a few things to get it up and running, but within an hour or two, everything was perfectly set up and running.

The downside to that level of simplicity, however, is that it removes the ability to fine-tune some key parts of the process. The most glaring omission is multi-track recording. Sure, you can record four people on mics and a fifth on a phone call, but it all records to the same track. That’s fine and dandy if you want something quick and dirty (as, granted, some podcasters do), but I’m a proponent of editing.

If you’re trying to make it sound professional, you’re going to want to cut it down. Even as someone whose podcast often runs in excess of an hour, I still find I spend much more time chopping the show up in Audacity than I do actually recording. It sucks, but that’s what you need to do if you want it to sound half decent.

Even if you’re not editing for content, at least cut the “uhms” and “ahs” and all of those bits where everyone talks over each other. That’s a hell of a lot easier to do when you’re operating with multiple tracks. I realize not everyone feels that way, but the option would be nice.

Setup mostly consists of unboxing and plugging in cables. Rode sent up a deluxe edition in a giant backpack that also included a pair of its Podcaster microphones and large, heavy stands. You’ll need to go through a couple of screens to set up odds and ends like time and date and to pair it to your phone, if you plan to go that route.

I tethered the board to my laptop during setup, in order to customize the sounds. It comes preloaded by default with applause, laughter, a rimshot and the like — it’s the Morning Zoo Crew package. I tossed in an intro and outro song and a couple of custom effects for good measure (Reggaeton air horn and Nelson from The Simpsons, naturally).

There’s a total of 512MB of storage, so you can add longer tracks as well, associating them by dropping them onto the corresponding pads on the desktop app. Check the levels, pop in a microSD card for recording and you’re off to the races.

I’ll admit that I ran into a couple of hiccups with things like phone audio through the board. Also, the rear headphone jacks require an adapter if you want everyone to hear themselves and the sound effects. Seems like an odd choice, given the novice target audience.

Original Content records its weekly episode on Fridays, so the timing worked out perfectly to test the thing out. Anthony and I set up mics across the table from each other and we beamed Jordan in via phone.

I hit record, tapped the intro music and we were off. Somewhat annoyingly, the buttons can only trigger the sounds, but not turn them off. That’s great for something like the air horn (for ironic comedic effect only, I swear), but less great with music. You’ll want to edit that down to the length you need it, otherwise you’ll end up potting down the volume, effectively losing that channel until it’s finished playing. The ability to see how much time is remaining on each track would have been a nice touch, but it’s not crucial here.

Once everything was up and running, we didn’t run into any issues for the hour and change we spent recording (aside from me riding the sound effect board a little too hard, perhaps). We finished recording, popped out the card and transferred the files. Boom, podcast.

The sound quality on the Rode mics is really terrific — borderline studio-quality stuff. The episode will be up in a few days, so you can judge for yourself. The sound on Jordan’s phone connection isn’t great, but you can’t really fault Rode for the poor state of cellphone call quality these days.

The Rodecaster Pro does exactly what is says on the box — and does most of it quite well. As someone who operated a board back in my radio days, I got back into the swing of things almost immediately. I’d forgotten how much I’d enjoyed going through those motions in the intervening years. And the ability to actually do a show face to face brings a level of energy and understanding you lose when relegated to Skype.

Bottom line: $600 for the board alone is going to be prohibitively expensive for many novice podcasters. But for a select few looking to start down the path to serious podcasting, this will really hit the sweet spot and up your game with the press of a button.

Florida men are seemingly involved in so many strange happenings involving pythons, alligators, and restaurant break-ins that when a parody “Florida Man” Twitter account surfaced back in 2013, it became an immediate sensation.

But a five-day-old GoFundMe fundraiser for Donald Trump’s border wall by a Florida man is starting to look anything like a joke. With ambitions to raise a brow-raising $1 billion, it has already secured nearly $13 million from more than 200,000 individuals since launching on Sunday. And GoFundMe campaigns do not have deadlines.

Where that mounting pile of money will land is the looming question. The man behind the campaign, Brian Kolfage, formerly ran conspiracy-theory websites, along with a Facebook page called Right Wing News that was shut down by Facebook in October.

Kolfage, who is also a U.S. veteran who served in Iraq and lost both legs and one arm, talks at some length about his public service on his GoFundMe page. He also states that he has been on Fox News “many times, [so] you can see I’m credible and a real person.” He meanwhile mentions nothing about his media ventures, telling NBC New yesterday that he doesn’t “want it to be a distraction” to potential donors.

More concerning are some of the claims that Kolfage makes at the page, including that 100 percent of their donations will go to the Trump Wall, when there is no apparent mechanism that would allow such a transfer of funds as of this moment. Congress would have to enact a statute to permit it. Writes Kolfage: “How will we get the funds to the right place? We have contacted the Trump Administration to secure a point of contact where all the funds will go upon completion. When we get this information secured, we will update. We have many very high level contacts already helping.”

The page also tells visitors that the U.S. government has accepted large donations from private investors in the past, linking to a 2012 story about billionaire David Rubenstein, co-founder of the Carlyle Group, who donated $7.5 million to repair cracks near the top of the Washington Monument. What the GoFundMe campaign does not make clear is that Congress was behind that particular initiative, allocating $7.5 million to the repairs on the condition that private donations would match that same amount.

In fact, numerous government agencies accept matching gifts from private donors, including the National Endowment for the Humanities. But the idea is to double the impact of government-led initiatives through those contributions, not to invite donors to dictate the initiatives themselves. As U.S. Representative Bob Goodlatte, a Republican from Virginia and the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, told the New York Post yesterday, “Obviously, we can’t let citizens raise money and say, ‘The government will spend my money on this purpose.’ ”

Given that roughly one-third of Americans of voting age identify as Republicans, two-thirds of whom appear to support Trump’s push for a border wall, Kolfage’s $1 billion target doesn’t sound entirely outlandish. The campaign has already landed one $50,000 donation, and  if it gains further momentum, others may come to view it as a straightforward way to flex their financial and political muscle.

Indeed, at some point, the campaign, if it continues to gain momentum, could begin to raise questions, beyond whether or not it’s smart for people to be sending their money to Kolfage. Specifically, though it’s against the law for the government to accept donations with strings attached, might we see a day when the U.S. citizens are able to wield as much power as lobbying groups by coming together on financial platforms like GoFundMe? Though no amount of money committed to Kolfage’s GoFundMe campaign would obligate the government to build a border wall, already Republican lawmakers have introduced bills seeking to allow the Treasury Department to accept public donations for the purpose of funding one. The bills are unlikely to go anywhere once Democrats take control of the House next month, but they could pave the path for future legislation.

In the meantime, what happens to Kolfage and the many millions of dollars he has raised will be interesting to watch. As a Post report yesterday noted, GoFundMe’s terms of service prohibit “not using funds for their stated purpose,” meaning that if the government can’t find a way to work with Kolfage, he may have to reimburse donors. Or, at least, GoFundMe — which hasn’t responded to our requests for comment — may be saddled with doing so.

It wouldn’t be the first time the platform has had to return money to a campaign’s donors.

Just last month, a New Jersey couple and a homeless man were accused of making up a story that raised more than $400,000 through GoFundMe, money that they reportedly spent on a car, trips, high-end handbags, and casinos. The couple and the man now face charges of second-degree theft by deception and conspiracy to commit theft by deception. GoFundMe has said it will fully reimburse the campaign’s 14,000 donors.

Interestingly, GoFundMe has never revealed how much it has raised from its own investors, which include Iconiq, Stripes Group, Accel, TCV, Greylock and Meritech Capital. It raised its first outside round of capital four years ago. The company was founded in 2010.

Pictured above: the strip mall in Castle Rock, Colorado, where donors to Kolfage’s GoFundMe campaign are being asked to send their checks.

In this app-laden world, there is now a void. One so large, it will be difficult to fill. Perhaps, the Kardashians will reconsider.

The Kardashian sisters, specifically Kim Kardashian West, Khloé Kardashian, and Kylie Jenner are shutting down their apps in 2019. Kendall Jenner stopped updating her app and website last year.  The apps and accompanying websites were provided through Whalerock Industries.

“We’ve had an incredible experience connecting with all of you thorough our apps these past few years but have made the difficult decision to no longer continue updating in 2019. We truly hope you’ve enjoyed this journey as much as we have, and we look forward to what’s ahead,” the statement from Kim Kardashian West said. Kourtney Kardashian issued a similar statement, adding a note to subscribers to follow her on Instagram.

It was a wild run for the Kardashian apps, at least in the beginning.

Kim Kardashian West made her debut in the iTunes App Store with “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood” game, which may have grossed the star and development partner $200 million in annual revenue, according to some reports at the time.

In 2015, the whole family got involved. Kim Kardashian West, Khloé Kardashian, Kendall Jenner and Kylie Jenner launched their own subscription apps in September 2015 — all of which shot up into the App Store’s top charts.

The apps, which charge customers $2.99 per month for a peek inside their lives, seemed poised to generate millions in annual gross revenue if growth rates and retention numbers could be sustained.

It appears that by 2018, the apps started tanking, and badly. According to App Annie, the apps don’t even make the overall ranking, which means they’re somewhere lower than #1500.

 

If only there was another way to a follow their lives.

While more than 60 companies have received permits to test their driverless vehicles in California, Zoox has become the first permitted to actually transport people in those vehicles. The California Public Utilities Commission today granted Zoox a permit to participate in the state’s Autonomous Vehicle Passenger Service pilot.

During the testing period, Zoox must have a safety driver behind the wheel and will not be allowed to charge passengers for rides. And, as part of the program, Zoox must provide data and reports to the CPUC regarding any incidents, number of passenger miles traveled, and passenger safety protocols.

“This is an important milestone on our pathway to deploying a fully autonomous commercial service,” Zoox Head of Corporate and Regulatory Affairs told TechCrunch via email.

This comes three months after Zoox tested autonomous rides as part of the Global Action Summit, and four months after Zoox co-founder Tim Kentley-Klay’s ouster from the company in late August. His firing came about a month after Zoox closed a $500 million funding round led by Mike Cannon-Brookes of Grok Ventures, which brought its total amount of funding to $800 million.

Zoox ultimately aims to commercially deploy autonomous vehicles by 2020 in the form of its own ride-hailing service. The cars themselves will be all-electric and fully autonomous. Meanwhile, ride-hail companies like Uber and Lyft are also working on autonomous vehicles, as well as a number of other large players in the space.

Zoox’s permit with the CPUC is good until Dec. 21, 2021. For some background, the CPUC has two pilot programs in place. One is for passenger testing with a safety driver and the other is for passenger testing without a safety driver in the vehicle.

Bellabeat, the company behind a variety of health and wellness wearable devices aimed at women, is now selling its first smartwatch. The device, which is simply called “Time,” was announced earlier this month right in the midst of holiday shopping season. Like other fitness trackers, the watch is capable of basic tasks like counting your steps, tracking sleep patterns and reminding you to move. But unlike traditional smartwatches — which, aesthetically, are still very much just a screen on your wrist — the Time is designed to look like jewelry.

The hybrid device looks like a watch — albeit not a very expensive one.

It’s squarely in the range of fashion jewelry, with either silver or rose gold stainless steel finishes to choose from, and a minimalist watch face that forgoes complications like the date or the moon phase, for example. It even lacks a second hand.

That said, I prefer its cleaner look-and-feel to the gaudier smartwatches put out by brands like Michael Kors and Fossil. (Plus, there’s no Android Wear/Wear OS to contend with here.)

As an analog watch, it has both its pros and cons.

It’s designed to be hypoallergenic so as not to irritate those with sensitive skin, and it has some water resistance. (ATM grade 3, meaning it can withstand a vigorous hand washing and the rain. You can’t swim, bathe or dive with it.)

You also don’t have to charge it, which makes it feel more like a “real” watch than a gadget.

However, there’s a potential downside here, too — the coin cell battery only lasts “up to” six months. You’ll then need to use the tiny tool it ships with to replace the old battery with a new one.

Of course, some will see a user-replaceable battery as a perk. I don’t, but that’s a personal preference on my part.

I much prefer just dropping my Apple Watch onto a charger rather than having to keep up with a small watch tool, which can be easy to lose or misplace in the time between repairs. I’m also not a fan of having to unscrew tiny screws and then finding some sort of small, sharp object to pop out the battery. Perhaps that’s because I have a child with a dozen or so battery-operated toys. I’m constantly unscrewing things to replace batteries, and frankly I don’t need another.

In any event, among the watch’s better aspects is the fact that it packages up fitness and wellness tracking in a device that passes as a regular — and even fairly attractive — piece of fashion jewelry. The Time will go better with some of your outfits where you just don’t think the Apple Watch works — even with one of Apple’s fancier bands.

Of course, it’s not as seamless to use Time as the Apple Watch, which has the Apple platform advantage. (Or an Android smartwatch paired with an Android phone, for that matter.)

Instead, you have to sync your activity between the watch and the third-party Bellabeat app to view things like the steps taken or hours slept. You do so by tapping a sync button in the app and double-tapping on the watch face.

The app can also serve as way to keep up with other aspects of your health and wellness, including your hydration goals, stress, meditation time and your period.

The stress metrics are calculated for you, based on factors like activity levels, sleep quality, reproductive health and meditation over the past week. But hydration and menstruation have to be logged manually (*unless you’re using Bellabeat Spring — see below.)

The mediation tracking only calculates your progress through the app’s own selection of more than 30 included exercises. While it’s nice to have access to those resources included in the app, many people are already using popular meditation apps like Calm or Headspace. An “import” option for externally logged “mindful minutes” would have been nice here.

One of Time’s better features are its silent alarms and inactivity alerts. Instead of pings and loud noises, the watch more calmly reminds you of things with vibrations you configure. There are also included alarms for waking up, taking your vitamins, taking your contraception pill and another general alarm setting, each with their own toggle switches and settings.

There is something to be said for a quieter smartwatch, especially if stress levels are a concern. (There’s also something to be said for a device that’s built by a woman with the needs of women in mind. Remember how long it took for Apple to realize period tracking was a thing?)

That said, it’s unfortunately becoming harder for smaller device makers to compete with the Apple Watch, which has now moved into advanced areas with its Series 4 line, with sports, life-saving ECG and fall detection features, along with smarter workout detection (and yes, you can still swim with it), plus its ability to work with the broader iOS app ecosystem in a more native way.

But the Apple Watch is pricier at $399 and up for current models. Bellabeat’s Time, by comparison, is $179.

The Bellabeat mobile app will work with other Bellabeat products, including its wellness tracker Leaf (which can be worn as a bracelet, necklace, clip, etc.), and $59 smart water bottle, Spring.

Combined, the Spring and Time could be a good entry point into the world of fitness and wellness trackers for those who never felt that wearables and trackers were right for them. Bellabeat’s line is more of a lifestyle choice based just as much on looks as on tech, if not more so.

The question now is whether or not Bellabeat can carve out a big enough slice of the smartwatch market, which continues to be dominated by Apple, to sustain itself in the years ahead.

Bellabeat was a Y Combinator 2014 grad founded by female entrepreneur Urska Srsen, and has raised ~$19 million to date, according to Crunchbase. It previously sold products for expectant mothers, as well, but those have been phased out. Bellabeat declined to share any user metrics or revenue figures, when asked.

If you’ve ever found yourself lugging a big suitcase from meeting to meeting, a startup called Bounce could make your life easier. Using Bounce, you’ll be able to pay for short-term storage at hotels, dry cleaners and other local businesses.

The San Francisco-based startup is announcing that it has raised $1.2 million in seed funding from investors including Structured Capital managing partner Jillian Manus, Seabed VC, Airbnb general counsel Rob Chesnut and Canadian entrepreneur Michael Hyatt.

CEO Cody Candee (pictured above with his co-founder and CTO Aleksander Rendtslev) said he’s actually not someone who owns a lot of stuff himself, but he realized that “people are constantly planning their days and planning their lives around the things that they own,” whether that’s running home to drop something off or heading straight to your hotel from the airport because you need to get rid of your luggage.

So Bounce has already signed up more than 100 locations across New York, San Francisco, Washington DC and Chicago, and it says they’ve has been used to store tens of thousands of bags. You currently browse these locations through the Bounce website, but Candee said an iOS app launch is imminent.

Apparently Bounce vets its locations, partly to ensure that they have secure storage areas and that their posted store hours are accurate — so that you don’t rush to the store to pick something up before closing, only to discover that everyone left early. Candee added that the most common use cases include travelers who have checked out of their hotels, people attending events (I once tried to carry my gym bag into Madison Square Garden and I will never do that again) and salespeople who are hopping from meeting to meeting.

There are other companies that appear to have a similar idea — for example, Vertoe was part of winter class at Techstars NYX — but Candee said that competitors are mostly “attacking just the luggage storage space,” which he suggested is “relatively easy to build.”

In contrast, he said, “The way we see it is, we’re really building a tech platform and basically thinking about these broader use cases.” In fact, he said Bounce is already testing out a system where items are transported by local couriers between different storage locations.

“We’re thinking about what could be built on top of that platform,” Candee said. “A drycleaner could come on our platform and they could basically say, ‘Hey, drop your clothes off’ and then Bounce it back to wherever that user is.”