Since it’s impossible, as a journalist, to crawl around all the stands at Web Summit in Lisbon, I thought it would be easier to stand in one place and meet people there!
Thus, you will get the chance to meet me (Mike Butcher) and pitch me your company for 1 MINUTE at Web Summit TODAY, at 4PM.
I will run the pitches and you can pitch the assembled crowd!
Facebook has yet again declined an invitation for its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to answer international politicians’ questions about how disinformation spreads on his platform and undermines democratic processes.
But policymakers aren’t giving up — and have upped the ante by issuing a fresh invitation signed by representatives from another three national parliaments. So the call for global accountability is getting louder.
Now representatives from a full five parliaments have signed up to an international grand committee calling for answers from Zuckerberg, with Argentina, Australia and Ireland joining the UK and Canada to try to pile political pressure on Facebook.
The UK’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee has been asking for Facebook’s CEO to attend its multi-month enquiry for the best part of this year, without success…
In its last request the twist was it came not just from the DCMS inquiry into online disinformation but also the Canadian Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.
This year policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic have been digging down the rabbit hole of online disinformation — before and since the Cambridge Analytica scandal erupted into a major global scandal — announcing last week they will form an ‘international grand committee’ to further their enquiries.
The two committees will convene for a joint hearing in the UK parliament on November 27 — and they want Zuckerberg to join them to answer questions related to the “platform’s malign use in world affairs and democratic process”, as they put it in their invitation letter.
Facebook has previously despatched a number of less senior representatives to talk to policymakers probing damages caused by disinformation — including its CTO, Mike Schroepfer, who went before the DCMS committee in April.
But both Schroepfer and Zuckerberg have admitted the accountability buck stops with Facebook’s CEO.
In addition to comprehensive privacy reviews, we put products through rigorous data security testing. We also meet with regulators, legislators and privacy experts around the world to get input on our data practices and policies.
The increasingly pressing question, though, is to whom is Facebook actually accountable?
Yet so far only the supranational EU parliament has managed to secure a public meeting with Facebook’s CEO. And MEPs there had to resort to heckling Zuckerberg to try to get answers to their actual questions.
“Facebook say that they remain “committed to working with our committees to provide any additional relevant information” that we require. Yet they offer no means of doing this,” tweeted DCMS chair Damian Collins today, reissuing the invitation for Zuckerberg. “The call for accountability is growing, with representatives from 5 parliaments now meeting on the 27th.”
The letter to Facebook’s CEO notes that the five nations represent 170 million Facebook users.
“We call on you once again to take up your responsibility to Facebook users, and speak in person to their elected representatives,” it adds.
Facebook say that they remain committed" to working with our committees "to provide any additional relevant information" that we require. Yet they offer no means of doing this. The call for accountability is growing, with representatives from 5 parliaments now meeting on the 27th pic.twitter.com/VJFtpqUi0r
The UK’s information commissioner said yesterday that Facebook needs to overhaul its business model, giving evidence to parliament on the “unprecedented” data investigation her office has been running which was triggered by the Cambridge Analytica scandal. She also urged policymakers to strengthen the rules on the use of people’s data for digital campaigning.
Last month the European parliament also called for Facebook to let in external auditors in the wake of Cambridge Analytica, to ensure users’ data is being properly protected — yet another invitation Facebook has declined.
Meanwhile an independent report assessing the company’s human rights impact in Myanmar — which Facebook commissioned but chose to release yesterday on the eve of the US midterms when most domestic eyeballs would be elsewhere — agreed with the UN’s damning assessment that Facebook did not do enough to prevent its platform from being used to incite ethical violence.
The report also said Facebook is still not doing enough in Myanmar.
Looking for a way to experience Disrupt Berlin 2018, but your budget simply won’t cooperate? Sign up as a volunteer, and we’ll thank you with a complimentary Innovator pass good for both days of the show. A lot of work goes into making Disrupt Berlin an outstanding event for every attendee, and this is a great opportunity to learn what it takes to produce an event of this magnitude.
Interested in joining our awesome volunteer squad? Apply right here.
What, exactly do the volunteers do? Excellent question. We might ask you to handle any number of tasks. You might help with pre-marketing activities, scan tickets, work at registration, place signage, stuff goodie bags or direct attendees. We’ll definitely keep you busy, but don’t worry — you’ll still have time to enjoy the show.
Here’s what we require from our volunteers — also known as the fine print.
Submit your volunteer application by 21 November
You must commit to a total of 12 volunteer hours
Attend the mandatory, in-person orientation on Tuesday evening, 27 November at Arena Berlin
You must be available for any assigned shift for the duration of the Disrupt conference starting on Wednesday 28 November and running through Friday 30 November
You provide your own housing and travel
Volunteers must be at least 18 years of age
Due to the high volume of applications, we will inform only the people we select as volunteers
That’s all there is to it. Whether you want to be a startup founder, a marketer or an event coordinator, volunteering is a great way to get a behind-the-scenes look at producing a tech conference — and still explore everything Disrupt Berlin has to offer. The deadline for volunteer applications is 21 November. Apply today, and thanks for your help!
Portify, a London fintech startup that offers an app and various financial products to help gig economy workers better manage their finances and in turn improve financial wellbeing, has raised £1.3 million in seed investment. The round is led by Kindred Capital, and company builder and investor Entrepreneur First (EF), with participation from various unnamed angel investors.
Founded in May last year by EF alumni Sho Sugihara (CEO) and Chris Butcher (CTO), Portify is setting out to address the financial volatility many flexible or so-called gig economy workers face. The startup offers a number of tailored financial products, accessible via its mobile app, to help flexible workers get insights into their current financial status and income, as well as do short and long-term financial planning.
The app — primarily a B2B2C play — is distributed in partnership with various gig economy platforms and also includes earning “rewards” at partnering merchants or service providers. The current Portify website lists TransferWise, Amazon, and Spotify as rewards.
“Portify’s vision is to enable financial security and wellbeing for independent workers,” Portify co-founder and CEO Sho Sugihara tells me. “While we’ve seen rapid growth in the numbers of independent workers (6 million in the U.K., and up to 162 million in the E.U. and U.S., according to McKinsey), there is still a large gap in the market for financial services to ensure these workers are secure, and have access to an economic ladder.
“We work with companies to help build access to financial products that enable this security and progression, and offer this through a mobile app which workers can port between different jobs”.
Sugihara says there are three elements to Portify’s mission: helping flexible workers control “immediate income volatility”, helping them budget effectively on a day-to-day basis, and support with financial planning for the long-term.
“Once a user gets access to our app, the first thing they do is securely connect their bank account,” he explains. “We then help control volatility by offering emergency credit with select stores to buy essentials products if required. We also help our users manage cash flow and budget for tax and other recurring expenses. By building up financial security and wellbeing from the ground up, our goal is to improve our user’s financial standing over the long term, whether through saving for retirement or helping them invest into their own businesses and careers”.
To that end, Sugihara says Portify is currently being used by independent workers in the gig economy and temp staffing sector. This covers couriers, ride-hailing drivers, retail shop floor staff, hospitality workers, amongst others. Its B2B customers span large gig economy platforms and digital temporary staffing agencies “with global coverage”.
Portify, a London fintech startup that offers an app and various financial products to help gig economy workers better manage their finances and in turn improve financial wellbeing, has raised £1.3 million in seed investment. The round is led by Kindred Capital, and company builder and investor Entrepreneur First (EF), with participation from various unnamed angel investors.
Founded in May last year by EF alumni Sho Sugihara (CEO) and Chris Butcher (CTO), Portify is setting out to address the financial volatility many flexible or so-called gig economy workers face. The startup offers a number of tailored financial products, accessible via its mobile app, to help flexible workers get insights into their current financial status and income, as well as do short and long-term financial planning.
The app — primarily a B2B2C play — is distributed in partnership with various gig economy platforms and also includes earning “rewards” at partnering merchants or service providers. The current Portify website lists TransferWise, Amazon, and Spotify as rewards.
“Portify’s vision is to enable financial security and wellbeing for independent workers,” Portify co-founder and CEO Sho Sugihara tells me. “While we’ve seen rapid growth in the numbers of independent workers (6 million in the U.K., and up to 162 million in the E.U. and U.S., according to McKinsey), there is still a large gap in the market for financial services to ensure these workers are secure, and have access to an economic ladder.
“We work with companies to help build access to financial products that enable this security and progression, and offer this through a mobile app which workers can port between different jobs”.
Sugihara says there are three elements to Portify’s mission: helping flexible workers control “immediate income volatility”, helping them budget effectively on a day-to-day basis, and support with financial planning for the long-term.
“Once a user gets access to our app, the first thing they do is securely connect their bank account,” he explains. “We then help control volatility by offering emergency credit with select stores to buy essentials products if required. We also help our users manage cash flow and budget for tax and other recurring expenses. By building up financial security and wellbeing from the ground up, our goal is to improve our user’s financial standing over the long term, whether through saving for retirement or helping them invest into their own businesses and careers”.
To that end, Sugihara says Portify is currently being used by independent workers in the gig economy and temp staffing sector. This covers couriers, ride-hailing drivers, retail shop floor staff, hospitality workers, amongst others. Its B2B customers span large gig economy platforms and digital temporary staffing agencies “with global coverage”.
We’re excited to announce our return to Shenzhen, which will host our next event in China later this month. Once again organized with our longtime local partner TechNode, the two-day event will run from November 19-20 at the Shenzhenwan Science and Technology Ecological Garden.
The theme of this year’s show is “reshaping innovation” and it’ll feature industry leaders, movers and shakers that include JD.com, HTC, Walmart, Airbnb, WeWork, Suning, Royole, Huami and lots and lots of investors. More widely, speakers at the show will come from areas that include IoT, artificial intelligence, big data, e-commerce, co-working, the shared economy, online education and — of course — the hardware.
For the third TechCrunch China event in a row, we’re dedicating an entire afternoon to blockchain technology. This time around, the blockchain stage will focus on (actual) use cases, ranging from smart cities and governance, to supply chain and fintech, especially in China.
Alongside keynotes and panels from tech leaders, our Startup Alley exhibition space will host more than 150 startups — so, if you want to see what’s hot in the ‘Silicon Valley of Hardware,’ don’t miss it!
Mobike CTO Joe Xia was among the speakers at last year’s TechCrunch China event in Shenzhen
We will also once again host the VC Meetup program. That includes the ‘business blind date’ feature that gives startup founders 10-minute meetups with top VCs. It has repeatedly been one of the most popular aspects of our Chinese events based on feedback from both founders and investors, too.
As is the case with TechCrunch events, the Shenzhen 2018 show will kick off with a hackathon that takes place over the weekend, 17-18 November. Since its inception in 2011, TechCrunch’s China hackathon has always has been an exciting and busy place for local coders, makers and designers across our events in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. No matter what ideas you think up or what skills you put to work, be sure to join us for a geeky weekend.
There’s plenty more going on beyond what we’ve highlighted above — you can check out the agenda for full details right here.
We look forward to seeing you in Shenzhen once again — don’t miss out, head here to get your ticket for the show!
Home Made, the London premium online lettings agency, has raised a further £2 million in funding. The round is led by Athens-based venture capital firm VentureFriends, and follows the proptech startup’s £850,000 “pre-seed” round nine months ago.
Founded in 2016 by Asaf Navot, a former Bain strategy consultant and INSEAD graduate, and Nick Binnington, a former British Army Captain and LBS graduate, Home Made’s proposition is based on the premise that the letting agent model is broken. Specifically, that high-street agents offer average service and charge extortionate fees, while online agents typically charge low fees but offer a worse service as a result.
The company positions itself as the only estate agency in the U.K. that offers a premium service akin to a high-end traditional estate agent, including accompanied property viewings and working until 10 pm at night, on weekends and bank holidays — for a low online fee starting at £948 +VAT. However, competitor Rentify also occupies a more upmarket space, but charges a monthly fee and is fully-managed and provides a ‘rent guarantee’. At the lower end are startups like Open Rent and uPad that operate more of a pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap à la carte model with various services to help you rent out your property.
To that end, Home Made says it plans to use the new funding to expand its offering and further develop its underlying technology, focus on growing its customer base in London “and beyond”. This will include hiring 20-25 new sales and marketing staff in the coming months.
The company’s proprietary online platform allows landlords to manage their properties from marketing to move-in. This includes full control during the marketing phase – landlords can add or remove marketing photos on the portals, write or enhance existing descriptions and change the price – and visibility of progress during tenancy progression.
International expansion has also begin: Home Made recently opened an office in Athens and says it is looking to develop several company functions in the country, including lead generation, tech support, and customer service and support. The startup says it has selected Greece for its first international office primarily due to “the growing Greek startup ecosystem which offers access to high caliber talent with international experience”.
Meanwhile, Home Made recently announced the launch of Sentinel, a tool that detects illegal subletting by tenants via short-let websites such as AirBnB. The idea is to help landlords tackle a growing illegal subletting problem that sees “tenants” rent out properties with no intention of ever ever staying in the property.
This activity commonly violates the terms of a Tenancy Agreement, and may also violate the building lease, local authority regulations, buildings insurance, and mortgage terms. It also withdraws these properties from the market for long-
term tenants, which in turn contributes to rental increases in London.
The 115 accounts Facebook took down yesterday for inauthentic behavior ahead of the mid-term elections may indeed have been linked to the Russia-based Internet Research Agency, according to a new statement from the company. It says that a site claiming association with the IRA today posted a list of Instagram accounts it had made which included many Facebook had taken down yesterday, and it also has since removed the rest.
Facebook’s head of cyber security policy Nathaniel Gleicher issued this statement to TechCrunch:
“Last night, following a tip off from law enforcement, we blocked over 100 Facebook and Instagram accounts due to concerns that they were linked to the Russia-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) and engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior, which is banned from our services. This evening a website claiming to be associated with the IRA published a list of Instagram accounts they claim to have created. We had already blocked most of these accounts yesterday, and have now blocked the rest. This is a timely reminder that these bad actors won’t give up — and why it’s so important we work with the US government and other technology companies to stay ahead.”
Yesterday, Facebook had published that it would provide an update on whether the removed accounts were connected to Russia, as some were in Russian languages:
“On Sunday evening, US law enforcement contacted us about online activity that they recently discovered and which they believe may be linked to foreign entities . . . Almost all the Facebook Pages associated with these accounts appear to be in the French or Russian languages, while the Instagram accounts seem to have mostly been in English — some were focused on celebrities, others political debate . . . Typically, we would be further along with our analysis before announcing anything publicly. But given that we are only one day away from important elections in the US, we wanted to let people know about the action we’ve taken and the facts as we know them today. Once we know more — including whether these accounts are linked to the Russia-based Internet Research Agency or other foreign entities — we will update this post.”
Attribution of foreign interference into politics via social media can be difficult to accurately attribute, however. Facebook could have provided stronger wording in this update regarding its own evidence about the connection between Russia and the 80 Facebook accounts and 35 Instagram accounts it removed yesterday.
China’s JD.com has made it clear recently that it’s venturing into artificial intelligence and automation. Every few months over the past year, the online retailer – China’s second-largest by transactions after Alibaba – has unveiled new products based on cutting-edge technology: for example drone delivery, self-driving trucks, fully automated warehouses, to name a few.
Most of these technologies are still in their testing phase and JD’s ever expanding technology investment is already eating into its profitability.
In the second quarter, the retail titan’s technology expenses were up over 70 percent year-over-year for the third consecutive quarter, costing the company 2.8 billion yuan, or $400 million. Net income slipped more than 50 percent to 478 million yuan, versus 977 million yuan last year.
By comparison, marketing and fulfilment, which traditionally make up the bulk of JD’s overall operating expenses, grew at less than 30 percent over the same period.
When will JD start to seriously capitalize on its technologies? When it can do things at scale, according to the company’s head of technology.
“If there is no scale, there is saving,” JD’s chief technology officer Zhang Chen told a group of reporters in Beijing on Tuesday.
“If you build something, you want other people to use that. It takes a lot of time to make a product perfect before you say it’s done. AI is all about iteration and how much data you get,” Zhang continued.
Alibaba also enjoys much wider profit margins than JD, thanks to a light-asset platform approach that connects vendors to consumers and derives the bulk of its revenue from advertising. JD, on the other hand, runs a more costly model that sees it operates most of the supply chain and deliver goods from warehouses to customers – like Amazon .
Alibaba’s operating margin in Q3 stood at 16 percent, while JD posted a 0.8 percent non-GAAP operating margin in Q2. That said, Alibaba has also suffered a margin squeeze in recent quarters as it continues to invest heavily in offline operations such as food delivery.
To secure more user traffic, JD has been leaning on its ties with Tencent, a major shareholder in its business and the builder behind the massively popular WeChat messenger. While Alibaba’s e-store links are blocked on WeChat, JD runs smoothly through a “mini program,” a light-weight application that runs inside WeChat’s interface that allows buyers to bypass app stores.
It’s unclear how much traffic WeChat brings over to JD. But WeChat has proven to be an effective channel for acquiring ecommerce users. This is evident in the case of group-buying app Pinduoduo, which started out as a WeChat mini program. In June, the three-year-old company leapfrogged JD in mobile penetration to reach 26.2 percent, according to data services provider Jiguang.
Pinduoduo’s rise was so impressive that its shares popped 40 percent in their first day of trading on NASDAQ in July though later nosedived following accusations over fake goods sold on the ecommerce platform.
Counterfeiting is a decade-old problem in the Chinese internet, tarnishing the name of both Alibaba’s online bazaar Taobao and even JD, which boasts of its authenticity of direct sales.
JD has also been looking overseas for growth. In August, Google poured $550 million in JD as part of a strategic partnership to help the Chinese company grab more users around the world. While JD’s vice president of strategy Ling Chenkai did not reveal details on the firm’s European plans when asked by TechCrunch on Tuesday, he assured going global has always been “an aspiration” for JD and partnership will play a key role amid the process.
But JD understands that it can’t always fall back on its partnerships, even with its close allies.
“Every company protects its data like [there will be] none tomorrow, even with strategic partners. Data sharing is a very serious business,” says Zhang the CTO.
“Most Chinese companies have a really big security team,” he observed, adding that while partners do not directly share data, they collaborate by exchanging user insights.
Take a subway ride in China and expect to see a lot of commuters’ eyes glued to TikTok videos on their phones.
Video clips like TikTok’s are now consuming nearly nine percent of Chinese people’s time online, a 5.2 percent jump from 2017, according to app analytics firm QuestMobile.
Apps such as TikTok — which is operated by ByteDance, the world’s highest valued startup at $75 billion — have become popular among previously camera-shy users. Those who lack editing experience can now easily add beautifying filters and music to spice up their work.
Elderly couple having a moment on Douyin / Credit: Douyin ID @淘气陈奶奶
It also helps that smartphone data became cheaper and internet penetration kept growing in recent years — China now has 800 million smartphone users, according to government data. In 2013, just under 40 percent of China’s online population streamed videos on their phones, according to database CBNData. In 2017, that ratio surged to 80 percent.
Initially geared towards Chinese youth, short-video apps have increased in popularity across all age groups – including the elderly. Over a third of the country’s 1.4 billion people are active on these apps every month. People above the age of 50 now spend as much as 50 minutes on them every day, compared to only 17 minutes a year ago.
And TikTok, called Douyin in China, is spearheading the short-video game.
Tencent’s nerves
In recent years, few mobile apps in China have captured as many stares as WeChat, Tencent’s messaging app that’s evolved into a one-stop platform allowing people to shop, order cabs, book hotels, and complete other daily tasks.
Then short video apps came along, eating people’s eyeball time away. Apps like TikTok do not compete directly with WeChat as they serve different purposes, but data suggests that use of instant messaging services has waned amid the fledgling video scene.
This year WeChat and its peers occupied 30.5 percent of people’s online time, a 3.6 percent drop year-over-year per the QuestMobile report.
It comes as no surprise that Tencent is fretting over the clip craze and in particular, ByteDance’s rise. In May, Tencent’s usually low-profile boss Pony Ma got in a rare online spat with ByteDance founder and CEO Zhang Yiming over plagiarism and WeChat blocking TikTok content.
Typical miming and finger dancing performed by teens / Credit: Douyin ID @李雨霏2007
Elsewhere, Tencent took action. Since April, the tech giant has rolled out a number of TikTok rivals but so far none has gotten close to the latter’s lion’s share: 500 million monthly active users worldwide. That’s excluding the 100 million total users on Musical.ly, which ByteDance acquired in late 2017 and merged into TikTok this August.
Tencent’s got other backup plans, though. It owns shares in TikTok’s China archrival Kuaishou, which had a 22.7 percent penetration rate in September according to data service provider Jiguang. That’s however, dwarfed by TikTok’s 33.8 percent, which means the app was installed on over a third of all mobile devices monitored by Jiguang. Plus, ByteDance’s other short-video apps for different niches, Huoshan and Xigua, are also faring well, commanding 13.1 percent and 12.6 percent, respectively.
Alibaba: not quite an ally
Until recently, ByteDance appeared to be making nice with China’s other internet giant — Alibaba. The companies kicked off a partnership in March that saw TikTok using Alibaba’s online marketplace Taobao to process ecommerce transactions on its app. Authorized TikTok users, usually those with a big following, can link videos to their Taobao shops. This money-making setup allows TikTok to lure more quality content creators. Alibaba, on the other hand, gets traffic from the fledgling social media app that could absorb some of the loss from WeChat blocking its ecommerce apps.
Things can go south anytime, however, as ByteDance makes forays into Alibaba’s territories. The startup recently introduced an ecommerce platform and entered the business of long-form video streaming, an area where Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu’s iQIYI dominate.
Life hacks are popular, too: guy sharing his gardening tips / Credit: Douyin ID @速效三元化合肥
ByteDance seems set to grow independently. Unlike many of China’s promising startups, six-year-old ByteDance hasn’t accepted financing from any of the tech trio of Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent — known as the BAT such is their dominance in China’s consumer technology.
ByteDance’s moves into new space may also signal the firm’s urge to explore additional monetization channels besides advertising on feeds. It lifted its revenue target to $7.2 billion for 2018, well above the $2.5 billion it earned last year, according to Bloomberg.
At home and afar
Despite the boom, China’s short-video market faces increasing regulatory headwinds. In recent months, authorities have been clamping down on Kuaishou, ByteDance’s video apps, and smaller players on account of eradicating content that’s deemed illegal or inappropriate.
Violation could result in app store bans and those that underwent such severe punishment like Miaopai, which is backed by China’s Twitter equivalent Weibo, suffered from a tumble in app installs.
Sometimes Douyin does get serious – a Beijing TV channel has its own account and it covers news here / Credit: Douyin ID @BTV新闻
ByteDance didn’t get a ban – yet, but it came under fire for its AI-driven recommendation algorithms. It’s something the startup prides itself on but has irritated media watchdogs who reprimanded TikTok for showing users “unacceptable” content, such as videos depicting adolescent pregnancies. ByteDance’s popular news aggregator Jinri Toutiao, or “today’s headlines,” received similar criticisms for giving its 120 million daily users “fluff”.
In response, ByteDance added thousands of censors to screen content on top of AI-driven recommendation across its apps.
ByteDance’s expanding territory through TikTok goes well beyond China. This year, the short-video platform has been climbing app store rankings around the world, an ascend accelerated by its incorporation of Musical.ly. Now it’s not just Tencent that’s taking note; Facebook is also building a TikTok clone, TechCrunch reported recently.
“Portify’s vision is to enable financial security and wellbeing for independent workers,” Portify co-founder and CEO Sho Sugihara tells me. “While we’ve seen rapid growth in the numbers of independent workers (6 million in the U.K., and up to 162 million in the E.U. and U.S., according to McKinsey), there is still a large gap in the market for financial services to ensure these workers are secure, and have access to an economic ladder.
