Year: 2018

Kenya based Sokowatch aims to shake up the supply chain market for Africa’s informal retailers.

The B2B e-commerce company closed a $2 million seed investment led by 4DX Ventures. Others to join the round were Village Global, Lynett Capital, Golden Palm Investments, and Outlierz  Ventures.

Sokowatch’s platform connects Africa’s informal retail stores directly to local and multinational suppliers—such as Unilever and Proctor and Gamble—by digitizing orders, delivery, and payments with the aim of reducing costs and increasing profit margins.

The term disrupt is used less frequently in African tech since startups are often entering new business spaces where there’s little to actually disrupt.

That’s not the case with Sokowatch, which sees price and productivity benefits to revamping existing supply chain structures for Africa’s informal retailers.

“With both manufacturers and the small shops, we’re becoming the connective layer between them, where previously you had multiple layers of middle-men from distributors, sub-distributors, to wholesalers,” Sokowatch founder and CEO Daniel Yu told TechCrunch.

“The cost of sourcing goods right now…we estimate we’re cutting that cost by about 20 percent [for] these shopkeepers,” he said

Quantifying the size and potential of Africa’s informal markets has captured the attention of economists and startups. GDP revisions in several African countries have revealed outdated statistical methods were missing billions of dollars in economic activity. And one estimate by The International Labor Organization places up to two-thirds of Sub-Saharan Africa’s non-agricultural employment in the informal economy.

On the number of small shops on the continent, Yu noted a lack of reliable numbers but cited a 2016 KPMG study pegging fast moving consumer goods spending in Nigeria alone at $41 billion annually. A portion of those goods move through the continent’s vast network of roadside markets, shops, and stands.

“There are millions of informal stores across Africa’s cities selling hundreds of billions worth of consumer goods every year,” said Yu.

These stores can use Sokowatch’s app on mobile phones to buy wares directly from large suppliers, arrange for transport, and make payments online. “Ordering on SMS or Android gets you free delivery of products to your store, on average, in about two hours,” said Yu.

Sokowatch generates revenues by earning “a margin on the goods that we’re selling to shopkeepers,” said Yu. On the supplier side, they also benefit from “aggregating demand…and getting bulk deals on the products that we distribute.”

The startup has delivered 100,000 orders to customers for “a few thousands shops,” according to Yu and company data.

The company recently launched a line of credit product to extend working capital loans to platform clients. With the $2 million round, Sokowatch—which currently operates in Kenya and Tanzania—plans to “expand to new markets in East Africa, as well as pilot additional value add services to the shops,” said Yu.

Peter Orth, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at lead investor 4DX Ventures, will join Sokowatch’s board of directors.

Yu also noted the possible big data benefits to informal African retail from Sokowatch. “If you are …selling into this market you have no clue who ultimately ends up with your product, even two layers down. That’s a big challenge,” he said.

“With us, not only do we know who’s buying the product, we know when they are buying the product, what they’re buying it in conjunction with, and the pricing.”

Here’s a timely reminder for all the European startup fans around the world. TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin 2018 takes place on November 29-30 — that’s just four short months away. But our super early-bird ticket pricing won’t last nearly that long. Right now, the pricing tiers start at €595 + VAT, but next week the prices go up. “That’s OK, I love spending money unnecessarily” — said no one ever. Save some euros and buy your pass here today.

Disrupt events always offer outstanding content, which includes interviews with top founders, VCs, tech titans and rising stars — and Disrupt Berlin 2018 won’t be the exception to that rule. Interested in European fintech? Of course, you are. We’re thrilled to count Anne Boden, the founder and CEO of Starling Bank, among our many excellent speakers.

If you’re interested in investors (and what early-startup founder isn’t), you won’t want to miss it when four partners from VC firm Accel — Philippe Botteri, Sonali De Rycker, Luciana Lixandru and Harry Nelis — conduct a partner meeting on our stage. Well not literally, but you can bet they’ll have a lot to say about the current state of startup investments.

We’re finalizing our speaker lineup, which means we’re still accepting nominations. If you have someone in mind, hit us up with your submission right here.

Disrupt isn’t a proper Disrupt without a Startup Battlefield. We’ve been holding these startup-pitch competitions for 12 years now, and our alumni community of more than 750 companies has gone on to collectively raise $8 billion in funding and produce 100 exits. Think your early-stage startup has the right stuff? We want to hear from you, so submit your application here and take a shot at winning $50,000 in non-equity cash along with intense love from investors and the media. Your business may just be the next unicorn, and it won’t cost you anything to participate in this potentially life-changing competition.

Disrupt Berlin offers plenty of ways to get your startup in front of investors, media, potential customers and future collaborators. One of the best ways to do that is to demo alongside hundreds of other amazing pre-Series A companies in Startup Alley, our exhibition floor — a breeding ground for opportunity. Don’t just take our word for it. Vlad Larin, a co-founder of Zeroqode, had this to say about his experience.

“Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt was a massively positive experience. It gave us the chance to show our technology to the world and have meaningful conversations with investors, accelerators, incubators, solo founders and developers.”

World-class speakers, a raucous pitch competition, awesome exhibitors and full-tilt networking. That’s just some of what you’ll experience at Disrupt Berlin 2018 on November 29-30 at the Arena Berlin. Do yourself a favor and experience it at the best possible price. Super early-bird tickets disappear next week. Buy your passes today.

Popular crypto wallet service MyEtherWallet has just launched a limited beta version of its first companion mobile app, which we wrote about earlier this week.

If you’re a big MyEtherWallet user or just curious about crypto, you’ll want to get hold of the app. Since it’s in beta, you’ll need to head here and follow the instructions to email the company to request access. A full launch for iOS and Android is expected in August.

The MEW Connect app allows users to log into the service without typing their private key, just like hardware solutions such as Ledger or Trezor. That’s important because inputting sensitive information like a private key can lead to an account being compromised in the event of a phishing attack. At least two major incidents have happened this year, so the threat is very real.

Unlike Ledger or Trezor, though, MEW Connect is free which could help encourage more people to adopt better security practices since MyEtherWallet.com is a much-trafficked website. The company says its domain sees upwards of 600,000 visitors each day.

MyEtherWallet founder Kosala Hemachandra told TechCrunch that he hopes beta users will comb through the code and help find issues with the app before its wider release to all, and the arrival of the Android app. Those with bugs can submit them on HackerOne here, where the rewards on offer range from $250 to $2,000.

Beyond enabling a secure connection for MyEtherWallet.com users, the app could offer features including payments in the future, Hemachandra admitted, which could provide a major boost to the crypto industry as it aims to reach more mainstream attention.

MyEtherWallet isn’t the only service supporting a connection app. MyCrypto.com, a service that broke away from MyEtherWallet earlier this year, MyCrypto.com supports the Parity Signer app.

Note: The author owns a small amount of cryptocurrency. Enough to gain an understanding, not enough to change a life.

Zen Rooms, the budget hotel network startup founded by Rocket Internet, had faced the deadpool earlier this year after a prospective funding deal collapsed, but now the business appears to have found a home. Korea’s Yanolja, a popular motel brand that has branched out into app-based hotel bookings, has made a strategic investment that could see it fully acquire the business.

Ten-year-old Yanolja is initially paying $15 million for an undisclosed “strategic non-controlling stake,” but it will retain the rights to buy 100 percent of the Zen Rooms business. Zen Rooms clarified that the acquisition is an option and not based on performance or financial metrics.

Founded by a former hotel worker, Lee Su-jin, Yanolja is best known for its lovel hotels although it is trying to clean up the general image of short-stay hotels by promoting them as destinations for business travelers, tourists and families, as noted by a Bloomberg profile story. The company has also grown its own app-based booking service which among the most used in its homeland with 20,000 rooms.

The company is reportedly planning an IPO, so expansion is on its mind.

For those reasons, Zen Rooms fits that new focus. The company borrowed the budget hotel model, first pioneered by SoftBank-backed Oyo in India, and brought it to Southeast Asia when it launched three years ago. The concept is simple, Zen Rooms guarantees minimum standards at all hotels including free WiFi, fresh towels and bedding, hot showers, etc all of which is controlled via a mobile app. Those standards are normal to most hotel stayers, but when traveling in the East, standards can vary wildly especially at budget hotels, which Zen Rooms is focused on.

For hotels, Zen Rooms manages the brand — and sometimes more — and it allows helps them tap the internet to find customers and bookings.

Today, Zen Rooms is active in six cities in Southeast Asia — it had previously also run operations in Brazil, Hong Kong and Sri Lanka — across which it claims to operate 1,000 hotel franchisees with an inventory of more than 7,000 rooms. Its rivals in Southeast Asia include Red Doorz, which raised $11 million earlier this year.

The startup has raised $8 million from investors to date, including a $4.1 million Series A last April that was led by Korea’s Redbadge Pacific and SBI Investment Korea with participation Asia Pacific Internet Group (APACIG), the joint venture fund in Asia between Rocket Internet and Qatari operator Ooredoo.

However, TechCrunch understands that a major funding deal of over $10 million fell apart in Q1 2018 which left the company with a rapidly depleting runway. As a result and as TechCrunch reported in March, the company was aggressively shopped to potential buyers, investors and rival companies in order to keep the business afloat.

Yanolja has come to the rescue but a full buy-out looks like it will be dependent on the company’s future performance, such is often the arrangement with strategic deals made with a view to full ownership. Rocket Internet, which remains a major investor in Zen Rooms, will hope that the deal goes as smoothly as Lazada, its e-commerce service that is now owned by Alibaba.

Lazada ran out of capital in similar circumstances in early 2016 and Alibaba, the Chinese internet giant, came to its aid with a $1 billion investment. Although that was a majority investment it wasn’t a full-on buyout. Alibaba later increased its holdings until it fully owned the business, and today it is a key part of the firm’s overseas expansion strategy.

Already, TechCrunch understands from one source that Zen Rooms has gone on a hiring spree in recent weeks after it closed the deal. It had earlier been forced to make cutbacks to its team as a result of cost-cutting following the collapse of the funding deal earlier in the year.

“We now have the capital to invest,” ZenRooms co-founder Kiren Tanna told TechCrunch. “The deal has been in discussion since earlier this year…. we are treating like an acquisition but this is step one.”

Tanna added that the company plans to focus on five markets in Southeast Asia, and an expansion to Vietnam may be in the pipeline soon.

Google confirmed it has issued a strike against Infowars founder Alex Jones’ YouTube channel for breaking the video platform’s policies against child endangerment and hate speech. Four videos were also removed. The strike means Jones’ channel will not be allowed to live stream for 90 days.

In a statement emailed to reporters, a Google representative said “We have long standing policies against child endangerment and hate speech. We apply our policies consistently according to the content in the videos, regardless of the speaker or the channel. We also have a clear three strikes policy and we terminate channels when they receive three strikes in three months.”

According to The Verge, two of the deleted videos contained hate speech against Muslims, a third had transphobic content and the fourth showed a child being shoved to the ground by a grown man with the headline “how to prevent liberalism.”

The fact that four deleted videos only amounted to one strike against Jones’ channel has prompted scrutiny of YouTube’s moderation policy, with critics arguing that each video that breaks the platform’s rules should warrant its own strike, especially for prolific repeat offenders.

Jones’ channel was issued a strike in February for a video promoting the conspiracy theory that survivors of the Parkland, Florida shooting, which killed 17 people, were actually “crisis actors.” But strikes expire after three months, so the Alex Jones channel currently has only one active strike against it.

While he promotes ideas that are ridiculous and hateful, Jones is influential and Infowars has helped promulgate many pernicious conspiracy theories. For example, he is currently being sued by family members of Sandy Hook victims for claiming that the mass shooting, which killed 27 people, including 20 small children, was staged. Since the shooting in December 2012, victims’ families have been targeted for harassment by conspiracy theorists.

The YouTube strike come a few days after Facebook refused to take down a video of Jones ranting against Robert Mueller, in which he accused the special counsel of committing sex crimes against children and mimed shooting him. Facebook told BuzzFeed News that Jones’ comments in the video, which was posted to his verified page, did not violate community standards because they are not a credible statement of intent to commit violence.

TechCrunch has also contacted Infowars for comment.

The tech gods and goddesses must adore procrastinators, because we were suddenly compelled to extend our early-bird pricing on passes to Disrupt San Francisco 2018. It kills us to see folks paying more than necessary, so you now have until August 1 at midnight PST — another full week — to get your tickets and experience all the tech and VC goodness that Disrupt San Francisco 2018 has to offer. Don’t put it off; go buy your tickets today.

Our most ambitious Disrupt event takes place at our new, larger venue, Moscone Center West, on September 5-7. If you haven’t heard, this will be our only Disrupt event in North America this year, and we’ve gone all-out to make these three days special and value-packed.

Startup Battlefield is always frenzied excitement, but this year, we super-sized the stakes. The grand prize? $100,000 in non-equity cash. The competition will be fierce, and we can’t wait to see how it all goes down.

We’ve gone global with a Virtual Hackathon, which features thousands of the world’s best tech-heads, coders, designers and programmers hacking some incredible creations and competing for a $10,000 grand prize. And thanks to our generous sponsors, we have a bunch of amazing hack contests that offer thousands of dollars in cash and prizes.

Every Disrupt offers an incredible list of speakers, and this year may stand out from the rest. We’re particularly excited to have some of the top women in the VC world grace our stage. We’re talking Megan Quinn, a general partner at Spark Capital; Sarah Tavel, Benchmark’s first — and so far, only — female general partner; and Aileen Lee, who coined the term Unicorn and has formed her own company, Cowboy Ventures.

Whether you’re a founder, an investor, a marketer or a job-seeker, you won’t find any better place to network than Startup Alley. Our exhibition floor features more than 1,200 early-stage startups showcasing a range of technological goodness with a particular emphasis on these 12 categories: AI, AR/VR, Blockchain, Biotech/Healthtech, Fintech, Gaming, Privacy/Security, Space, Mobility, Retail or Robotics/IoT.

Founders and investors can make their networking a whole lot easier by using CrunchMatch. That’s our free business match-making service that connects early-stage startup founders and investors who share similar business interests and profiles.

Disrupt San Francisco 2018 takes place on September 5-7. So many great reasons to go, and now you have one extra week to buy your pass. Early-bird pricing ends on August 1 at midnight PST. Depending on which type of pass you choose, you can save up to $1,200. Don’t pay more than necessary. Buy your tickets today.

The trouble with microphones is that they don’t just hear — they have to listen. Powering the mic and its signal processor means using energy, and energy means a battery, and a battery means charging. This new microphone-like system hears more like the way our own ears do, requiring little or no power, and could help fill the world with voice-responsive machines. (If that’s something we really want.)

The device is called a “triboelectric auditory sensor,” and it works via what’s called the triboelectric effect — essentially when two surfaces rub together and create a charge. They’re still trying to figure out why this happens, but what matters to engineers is that it happens reliably.

Triboelectric nanogenerators have been around for a few years, creating power by having two compatible materials interact with each other at super-small scales. While they’re tiny and highly efficient, they don’t actually produce a lot of power. Researchers from Chongqing University found that, fortunately, you don’t need a lot of power for the purposes of detecting sound.

Our own ears have what’s called a cochlea inside them, a sort of long sealed canal filled with liquid and motion-sensitive cells; when sound hits the end of the cochlea, different parts of it vibrate depending on the frequencies that make up the sound. It’s basically a Fourier Transform done instantly by organic hardware and is very cool.

The triboelectric auditory sensor does something like this. All along its surface are tiny membranes that vibrate when sound waves strike them, causing the materials to rub together and generate a small charge. By recording the different charges from the different membranes with different frequency responses, the device puts together a complete picture of the sound it hears, using no power but what is created by the nanogenerators. It’s also extremely sensitive.

Currently it’s just a prototype, but the researchers demonstrate it in use in various everyday circumstances, so it definitely works. Such a low-power solution could be a way for, say, a piece of electronics to save energy and sleep all day, only waking when it detects someone has walked in the room. It’s a good fit for robots, too, as the device is thin and flat and can even be transparent. No need for ear holes, then.

Hearing aids could also be improved with these: hearing loss often covers a stretch of frequencies — say, from 500-1,000 Hz — and the triboelectric sensors can be tuned to accept only sound from that span and amplify it for the wearer. No need to accept all the frequencies, process the sound, apply filters, and retransmit it.

These aren’t going to replace microphones altogether, but they’re an attractive option for applications where energy consumption must be kept to an absolute minimum — and such applications are multiplying with the growth of IoT and embedded electronics.

In December, Apple introduced a new pay-per-install ad product called Search Ads Basic aimed at smaller developers, to complement the existing Search Ads product, which then became known as Search Ads Advanced. Today, the company is expanding Search Ads to more countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and Spain, bringing the total number of countries where Search Ads is available to thirteen.

In addition to the U.S., Search Ads Advanced had already expanded to Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the U.K.

Developers in the newly supported countries will be able to create campaigns using Search Ads Advanced starting on July 25, 2018 at 4 PM PDT, with those campaigns appearing on the App Store starting August 1, 2018 at 4 PM PDT.

Meanwhile, Search Ads Basic will be available across all thirteen supported countries starting on August 22, 2018 at 10 AM PDT.

To encourage sign-ups, Apple is offering first-time advertisers a $100 USD credit to try out the product.

While the first version of Search Ads launched back in October 2016 in the U.S., the idea behind the newer “Basic” product was to offer developers a different – and simpler – means of reaching potential customers.

Search Ads was originally designed to allow developers to target users’ keyword searches, combined with other factors like location, gender or whether or not they had installed the app in the past. Developers would pay when users tapped on those targeted ads.

With the launch of Search Ads Basic, it’s easier to set up campaigns.

Developers only have to enter the app to be advertised, the campaign’s budget, and how much they want to pay per install. Apple helps by suggesting the max developers should pay using historical data. Then, developers only pay for actual installs, not taps.

Although the App Store was redesigned with the launch of iOS 11 to offer improved discoverability, search is still a key way people find out about apps.

Apple says that over 70 percent of App Store visitors use search to discover apps, in fact, and 65 percent of all downloads come directly from an App Store search.

The ads work well, too, as they have an over 50 percent conversion rate, on average, says Apple.

Apple’s advantage over the pay-per-install ads found elsewhere on the web isn’t only the ads’ placement – at the top of App Store searches, where they’re identified with a blue background and “Ad” icon – it also manages this without violating user privacy. That is, it doesn’t build specific profiles on individuals for ad targeting purposes, and it doesn’t share user data with developers. By its nature, this makes the system GDPR compliant.

In addition, Apple only places an ad when it’s relevant to a user’s search – developers can’t pay more to have their ad shown more often across less relevant searches, which offers a more level playing field.

Apple didn’t say when Search Ads would reach other countries, but with the new expansions it has some of the top markets now covered.

Facebook’s share price fell over 20 percent in after-hours trading today after the company announced its slowest-ever user growth rate and a scary warning that its revenue growth would rapidly decelerate. Before today’s brutal Q2 earnings, Facebook’s share price closed today at $217.50, but fell to around $172 after the earnings call. That’s a market cap drop of roughly $123 billion. In two hours, Facebook lost more value than most startups and even public companies are ever worth.

Here’s the full story on Facebook’s disastrous Q2 2018 earnings:

So why did Facebook’s share price sink like a stone? There are five big reasons:

Slowest-Ever User Growth Rate – Facebook’s monthly user count grew just 1.54, compared to 3.14 last quarter. Daily active users grew even slower at 1.44 percent, compared to 3.42 percent last quarter. For reference, 2.18 percent was its previous slowest DAU growth rate back in Q4 2017. Suddenly hitting this wall could limit Facebook’s total user count over the long-run, and its revenue with it. Facebook tried to distract from these facts by announcing a new “family of apps audience” metric of 2.5 billion people using at least one of its apps, which will hide the shift of users from Facebook to Instagram and WhatsApp.

User Count Shrank In Europe, Flat In US & Canada – Facebook saw its first-ever decline in monthly user count in Europe, from 377 million to 376 million. It got stuck at 241 million in the US & Canada after similarly pausing at 239 million in Q4 2017. Those are Facebook’s two most lucrative markets, with it earning $25.91 per user in North America and $8.76 in Europe. If those markets stall, even swift growth in the Rest Of World region where it earns just $1.91 per user won’t save it.

Decelerating Revenue Growth – Facebook’s revenue grew a remarkable 42 percent year-over-year this quarter. But CFO David Wehner warned that metric would decelerate by high single-digit percentage per quarter over the coming quarters. Wehner said a combination of currency headwinds, new privacy controls, and new experiences like Stories will contribute to the deceleration. This news is what caused Facebook’s share price to drop from -7 percent to `-20 percent.

Privacy And Well-Being – Q2 saw the debut of Europe’s GDPR that forced Facebook to change its privacy policies and get users to agree to how it collects data about them. Wehner blamed GDPR for Facebook loss of users in Europe. That law and Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal led the company to have to improve its privacy controls. These could make it tougher for Facebook to target people with ads or show their content to more people.

Meanwhile, Facebook has continued to adopt the “Time Well Spent” philosophy, removing click-bait news and crappy viral videos that lead to passive internet content consumption that studies say is unhealthy. Instead, Facebook is pushing features like Watch Party where users actively interact with each other. Those might not produce as much time on site and subsequent ad views, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the changes are “positive and we’re going to continue in this direction.”

The Shift To Stories – Facebook estimates that by in 2019, sharing via ephemeral vertical Stories slideshows will surpass sharing via feeds. The problem is that advertisers may be slower than users to make that shift. “Will this monetize at the same rate as News Feed? We honestly don’t know” COO Sheryl Sandberg said. Stories ads might be full-screen and more immersive, but they don’t show off links to online stores as well, nor are they as well optimized from decades of banner ad experience by the industry.

Luckily, even though Snapchat invented the Stories format, Facebook has far more people using it each day, with 150 million Stories users on Facebook, 70 million on Messenger, 400 million on Instagram, and 450 million on WhatsApp . If Facebook does manage to figure out Stories ads, it could dominate, but it could take years for its advertiser count and ad prices to rise to offset the shift away from feeds.

The pre-social media phenomenon that was early 2000s American Idol might be a weird place to spend a lot of focus when it comes to thinking about the future. But it’s also worth noting how little these types of shows adapted to build themselves into the fabric of live social commentary. Twitter has offered a nice second screen for thirsty users, but what would reality TV look like if it was built for the smartphone?

The team behind FameGame is aiming to answer these very fascinating/worrying questions with their new app which envisions the rebirth of live reality TV on your smartphone. The company’s first offering seems to be a mix of American Idol, Musical.ly and HQ Trivia with young users vying to flex their talents and social media prowess to win cash and glory.

The startup sees live gamified engagement as a social outlet that existing apps and platforms aren’t making much of a dent in. FameGame CEO Alexandra Botez grew interested in the concept after getting into live-streaming herself playing chess on Twitch and seeing the potential of bringing users closer to less gaming-focused verticals.

“We thought that the interactivity of live gaming could also be applied to make conventional TV more entertaining,” Botez tells TechCrunch. “We think Musical.ly and Instagram are pretty big so it’s hard for them to change their infrastructure in such a way that they make the type of immersive experience that we’ve created with FameGame.”

FameGame plays the game of fame by getting users to submit self-shot smartphone videos of their talents. The challenges differ by week but one contest may be focused on dance skills while another may be focused on lip-syncing. After an initial submission period, users can check out what’s been uploaded and vote for their favorites which will be included in a live show that’s hosted at 5:00 PM PT every day.

Cash prizes are at stake, but the real emphasis seems to be on social validation. Winners will also get a shoutout from a Musical.ly “celebrity” user and a big emphasis is put on the host shouting out users and their handles to drive attention their way. The whole design seems to take some pretty clear, erm, inspiration from HQ Trivia but the live voting component adds a more impactful community vibe to it though once users see they aren’t included amongst the finalists, it might be hard to hold onto viewers.

The startup’s efforts are going to start with a focus on the crowd that has helped catapult apps like Instagram and Musical.ly to rabid success. “We decided to go with young teenage girls because they are really obsessed with becoming famous on social media and they spend a lot of time on Musical.ly posting videos and not necessarily getting the gratification that they might want,” CTO Ruben Mayer-Hirshfeld tells me.

There are certainly some unique challenges with catering to such a young user base, especially from a safety standpoint. The company is going to curate the few videos that go into the live show, but there isn’t any screening happening in between user submission and user voting aside from a reporting button so the burden is ultimately put on a young user base to decide what crosses the line.

FameGame is just the start for the company’s ambitions. Botez tells me that there are a number of different TV show formats that seem ripe for the live social mobile elements, but that the main focus is getting excited teens on FameGame right now and seeing whether the format can catch steam and move beyond what’s out there already.