Timehop has disclosed a security breach that has compromised the personal data (names and emails) of 21 million users. Around a fifth of the affected users — or 4.7M — have also had a phone number that was attached to their account breached in the attack.

The startup, whose service plugs into users’ social media accounts to resurface posts and photos they may have forgotten about, says it discovered the attack while it was in progress, at 2:04 US Eastern Time on July 4, and was able to shut it down two hours, 19 minutes later — albeit, not before millions of people’s data had been breached.

According to its preliminary investigation of the incident, the attacker first accessed Timehop’s cloud environment in December — using compromised admin credentials, and apparently conducting reconnaissance for a few days that month, and again for another day in March and one in June, before going on to launch the attack on July 4, during a US holiday.

Timehop publicly disclosed the breach in a blog post on Saturday, several days after discovering the attack.

It says no social media content, financial data or Timehop data was affected by the breach — and its blog post emphasizes that none of the content its service routinely lifts from third party social networks in order to present back to users as digital “memories” was affected.

However the keys that allow it to read and show users their social media content were compromised — so it has all keys deactivated, meaning Timehop users will have to re-authenticate to its App to continue using the service.

“If you have noticed any content not loading, it is because Timehop deactivated these proactively,” it writes, adding: “We have no evidence that any accounts were accessed without authorization.”

It does also admit that the tokens could “theoretically” have been used for unauthorized users to access Timehop users’ own social media posts during “a short time window” — although again it emphasizes “we have no evidence that this actually happened”.

“We want to be clear that these tokens do not give anyone (including Timehop) access to Facebook Messenger, or Direct Messages on Twitter or Instagram, or things that your friends post to your Facebook wall. In general, Timehop only has access to social media posts you post yourself to your profile,” it adds.

“The damage was limited because of our long-standing commitment to only use the data we absolutely need to provide our service. Timehop has never stored your credit card or any financial data, location data, or IP addresses; we don’t store copies of your social media profiles, we separate user information from social media content — and we delete our copies of your “Memories” after you’ve seen them.”

In terms of how its network was accessed, it appears that the attacker was able to compromise Timehop’s cloud computing environment by targeting an account that had not been protected by multifactor authentication.

That’s very clearly a major security failure — but one Timehop does not explicitly explain, writing only that: “We have now taken steps that include multifactor authentication to secure our authorization and access controls on all accounts.”

Part of its formal incident response, which it says began on July 5, was also to add multifactor authentication to “all accounts that did not already have them for all cloud-based services (not just in our Cloud Computing Provider)”. So evidently there was more than one vulnerable account for attackers to target.

Its exec team will certainly have questions to answer about why multifactor authentication was not universally enforced for all its cloud accounts.

For now, by way of explanation, it writes: “There is no such thing as perfect when it comes to cyber security but we are committed to protecting user data. As soon as the incident was recognized we began a program of security upgrades.” Which does have a distinct ‘stable door being locked after the horse has bolted’ feel to it.

It also writes that it carried out “the introduction of more pervasive encryption throughout our environment” — so, again, questions should be asked why it took an incident response to trigger a “more pervasive” security overhaul.

Also not entirely clear from Timehop’s blog post: When/if affected users were notified their information has been breached.

The company posed the blog post disclosing the security breach to its Twitter account on July 8. But prior to that its Twitter account was only noting that some “unscheduled maintenance” might be causing problems for users accessing the app…

We’ve reached out to the company with questions and will update this post with any response.

Timehop does say that at the same time as it was working to shut down the attack and tighten up its security, company executives contacted local and federal law enforcement officials — presumably to report the breach.

Breach reporting requirements are baked into Europe’s recently updated data protection framework, the GDPR, which puts the onus firmly on data controllers to disclose breaches to supervisory authorities — and to do so quickly — with the regulation setting a universal standard of within 72 hours of becoming aware of it (unless the personal data breach is unlikely to result in “a risk to the rights and freedoms of natural persons”).

Referencing GDPR, Timehop writes: “Although the GDPR regulations are vague on a breach of this type (a breach must be “likely to result in a risk to the rights and freedoms of the individuals”), we are being pro-active and notifying all EU users and have done so as quickly as possible. We have retained and have been working closely with our European-based GDPR specialists to assist us in this effort.”

The company also writes that it has engaged the services of an (unnamed) cyber threat intelligence company to look for evidence of use of the email addresses, phone numbers, and names of users being posted or used online and on the Dark Web — saying that “while none have appeared to date, it is a high likelihood that they will soon appear”.

Timehop users who are worried the network intrusion and data breach might have impact their “Streak” — aka the number Timehop displays to denote how many consecutive days they have opened the app — are being reassured by the company that “we will ensure all Streaks remain unaffected by this event”.

We’d be hard-pressed to find something we love to cover more than a rapidly evolving tech startup ecosystem. That’s one of the big reasons we’re so excited to be heading back to Africa — specifically Lagos, Nigeria — to host TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Africa 2018 on December 11. With more than 300 tech hubs across the continent connecting and mentoring entrepreneurs and innovators, it’s a prime time to be a startup in Africa — and the perfect time to launch your startup to the world. Apply right here, right now.

Last year, our first Startup Battlefield Africa took place in Nairobi, Kenya and featured 15 amazing startups, with one winner in three different categories. This year, we’re tweaking the format a bit, so here’s what you need to know.

Any type of tech startup may apply. Highly discerning TechCrunch editors will review the applications and choose the 15 startups they deem most likely to produce an exit or IPO. The founders of the competing teams will receive free pitch coaching from TechCrunch, and they’ll be ready to face a panel of judges (recruited by our editors), all experts in their categories.

Five startups will compete in one of three preliminary rounds where they will have six minutes to pitch and present their demo. The judges will then have six minutes to ask questions. The judges will select five of the 15 startups to pitch a second time, and from that elite group of five comes one overall winner of TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Africa 2018.

In addition to an intense amount of media and investor interest, the founders of the winning startup will receive US$25,000 in no-equity cash plus a trip for two to compete in Startup Battlefield in San Francisco at our flagship event, TechCrunch Disrupt 2019 (assuming the company still qualifies to compete at the time).

Are you as excited as we are? Do you want to launch your startup to the world? Ready to submit your application? Here’s what you need to know about eligibility. Startups should:

• Be early-stage companies in “launch” stage
• Be headquartered in one of our eligible countries*
• Have a fully working product/beta, reasonably close to or in production
• Have received limited press or publicity to date
• Have no known intellectual property conflicts

TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Africa 2018 takes place in Lagos, Nigeria on December 11. Does your startup have what it takes to win it all? Your destiny awaits — apply today.

*Residents in the following countries may apply:

Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cabo Verde, Central Africa Republic, Chad, Comoros, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the foregoing language, the “Applicable Countries” does not include any country to or on which the United States has embargoed goods or imposed targeted sanctions (including, but not limited to, Sudan).

TaxScouts, a U.K. startup founded by TransferWise and Marketinvoice alumni, is the latest online service designed to make filing your tax return a lot less tedious. However, rather than focusing on the bookkeeping part of the problem primarily tackled by cloud accounting software — which is often overkill if you are self-employed or simply earn a little additional income outside of your day job — the company combines “automation” with human accountants to help you prepare your tax submission.

“Doing taxes is either tedious when you have to do them yourself, or expensive when you hire an accountant,” says TaxScouts co-founder and CEO Mart Abramov, who was employee number 8 at TransferWise and also previously worked at Intuit, MarketInvoice and Skype. “We’re automating as much of the admin part of tax preparation as possible in our online app. We then connect you with a certified accountant who will take care of the entire tax filing process for you”.

The headline draw is that TaxScouts charges a flat fee of £99 if you pay in advance, and promises a turn-around of just 24 hours. To help with this, the web app walks you through your tax status, income and expenses without assuming too much prior knowledge. This includes asking you to upload or take a photo of any required documents, such as invoices or dividend certificates. The idea is that all of the admin is captured digitally and packaged up ready for your assigned accountant to take a look.

“As more of the menial tasks are handled by our app this allows accountants to focus on what they do best and not get stuck in admin,” explains Abramov. “They can focus on providing advice and expertise to make sure everything is done right. Our customers get both the benefits of getting a personal accountant and having a simple tool to manage it all, without the huge costs”.

Abramov tells me that TaxScouts’ typical customers are anyone who wants to have their self assessment done for them or who just wants help with tax preparation. This spans self-employed people — from construction workers to professional freelancers — entrepreneurs and company directors, and people who are entitled to some kind of tax relief or refund, such as investors on crowdfunding platforms. He also said that gig economy workers are a good fit.

Moving forward, TaxScouts plans to further develop the automation functionality, including plugging into more data sources beyond its existing integration with HMRC. Abramov says this could include a driver’s Uber data for tracking mileage claims, for example, while I can immediately see how the app could integrate with various fintech offerings that capture transactions and receipts.

To that end, the startup has raised £300,000 in “pre-seed” funding to continue building out the product. Backers include Picus Capital, Charlie Delingpole (co-founder of ComplyAdvantage and MarketInvoice), and Charlie Songhurst (former GM corporate strategy at Microsoft).

At WWDC, Apple pitched Shortcuts as a way to ”take advantage of the power of apps” and ”expose quick actions to Siri.” These will be suggested by the OS, can be given unique voice commands, and will even be customizable with a dedicated Shortcuts app.

But since this new feature won’t let Siri interpret everything, many have been lamenting that Siri didn’t get much better — and is still lacking compared to Google Assistant or Amazon Echo.

But to ignore Shortcuts would be missing out on the bigger picture. Apple’s strengths have always been the device ecosystem and the apps that run on them.

With Shortcuts, both play a major role in how Siri will prove to be a truly useful assistant and not just a digital voice to talk to.

Your Apple devices just got better

For many, voice assistants are a nice-to-have, but not a need-to-have.

It’s undeniably convenient to get facts by speaking to the air, turning on the lights without lifting a finger, or triggering a timer or text message – but so far, studies have shown people don’t use much more than these on a regular basis.

People don’t often do more than that because the assistants aren’t really ready for complex tasks yet, and when your assistant is limited to tasks inside your home or commands spoken inton your phone, the drawbacks prevent you from going deep.

If you prefer Alexa, you get more devices, better reliability, and a breadth of skills, but there’s not a great phone or tablet experience you can use alongside your Echo. If you prefer to have Google’s Assistant everywhere, you must be all in on the Android and Home ecosystem to get the full experience too.

Plus, with either option, there are privacy concerns baked into how both work on a fundamental level – over the web.

In Apple’s ecosystem, you have Siri on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod, CarPlay, and any Mac. Add in Shortcuts on each of those devices (except Mac, but they still have Automator) and suddenly you have a plethora of places to execute these all your commands entirely by voice.

Each accessory that Apple users own will get upgraded, giving Siri new ways to fulfill the 10 billion and counting requests people make each month (according to Craig Federighi’s statement on-stage at WWDC).

But even more important than all the places where you can use your assistant is how – with Shortcuts, Siri gets even better with each new app that people download. There’s the other key difference: the App Store.

Actions are the most important part of your apps

iOS has always had a vibrant community of developers who create powerful, top-notch applications that push the system to its limits and take advantage of the ever-increasing power these mobile devices have.

Shortcuts opens up those capabilities to Siri – every action you take in an app can be shared out with Siri, letting people interact right there inline or using only their voice, with the app running everything smoothly in the background.

Plus, the functional approach that Apple is taking with Siri creates new opportunities for developers provide utility to people instead of requiring their attention. The suggestions feature of Shortcuts rewards “acceleration”, showing the apps that provide the most time savings and use for the user more often.

This opens the door to more specialized types of apps that don’t necessarily have to grow a huge audience and serve them ads – if you can make something that helps people, Shortcuts can help them use your app more than ever before (and without as much effort). Developers can make a great experience for when people visit the app, but also focus on actually doing something useful too.

This isn’t a virtual assistant that lives in the cloud, but a digital helper that can pair up with the apps uniquely taking advantage of Apple’s hardware and software capabilities to truly improve your use of the device.

In the most groan-inducing way possible, “there’s an app for that” is back and more important than ever. Not only are apps the centerpiece of the Siri experience, but it’s their capabilities that extend Siri’s – the better the apps you have, the better Siri can be.

Control is at your fingertips

Importantly, Siri gets all of this Shortcuts power while keeping the control in each person’s hands.

All of the information provided to the system is securely passed along by individual apps – if something doesn’t look right, you can just delete the corresponding app and the information is gone.

Siri will make recommendations based on activities deemed relevant by the apps themselves as well, so over-active suggestions shouldn’t be common (unless you’re way too active in some apps, in which case they added Screen Time for you too).

Each of the voice commands is custom per user as well, so people can ignore their apps suggestions and set up the phrases to their own liking. This means nothing is already “taken” because somebody signed up for the skill first (unless you’ve already used it yourself, of course).

Also, Shortcuts don’t require the web to work – the voice triggers might not work, but the suggestions and Shortcuts app give you a place to use your assistant voicelessly. And importantly, Shortcuts can use the full power of the web when they need to.

This user-centric approach paired with the technical aspects of how Shortcuts works gives Apple’s assistant a leg up for any consumers who find privacy important. Essentially, Apple devices are only listening for “Hey Siri”, then the available Siri domains + your own custom trigger phrases.

Without exposing your information to the world or teaching a robot to understand everything, Apple gave Siri a slew of capabilities that in many ways can’t be matched. With Shortcuts, it’s the apps, the operating system, and the variety of hardware that will make Siri uniquely qualified come this fall.

Plus, the Shortcuts app will provide a deeper experience for those who want to chain together actions and customize their own shortcuts.

There’s lots more under the hood to experiment with, but this will allow anyone to tweak & prod their Siri commands until they have a small army of custom assistant tasks at the ready.

Hey Siri, let’s get started

Siri doesn’t know all, Can’t perform any task you bestow upon it, and won’t make somewhat uncanny phone calls on your behalf.

But instead of spending time conversing with a somewhat faked “artificial intelligence”, Shortcuts will help people use Siri as an actual digital assistant – a computer to help them get things done better than they might’ve otherwise.

With Siri’s new skills extendeding to each of your Apple products (except for Apple TV and the Mac, but maybe one day?), every new device you get and every new app you download can reveal another way to take advantage of what this technology can offer.

This broadening of Siri may take some time to get used to – it will be about finding the right place for it in your life.

As you go about your apps, you’ll start seeing and using suggestions. You’ll set up a few voice commands, then you’ll do something like kick off a truly useful shortcut from your Apple Watch without your phone connected and you’ll realize the potential.

This is a real digital assistant, your apps know how to work with it, and it’s already on many of your Apple devices. Now, it’s time to actually make use of it.

In 2008, the electric motor vehicle experienced a rebirth triggered by a rise in oil prices. Now in 2018, it is the time for another rebirth — in electrical aviation. Over the decades, advances have been made across the aviation field and on all fronts. In 1986, Burt Rutan made the first non-stop, unrefueled flight around the world.

Now, 30 years later another trip around the world was completed, marking the first electrical powered circumnavigation. The lofty journey started in Abu Dhabi and 16 months later landed back where its journey began. This plane, unlike others that have made the journey before, emitted no emissions and burned no fuel. Instead, it used solar panels, an electric motor and 4 massive 41 kWh lithium-ion batteries.

Called Solar Impulse 2, it changed the world of aviation when it completed its flight in 2016. Since then, the vision of an electrically powered commercial airplane has gone from a dream to a possibility.

A future that includes electric flight is a positive one, slashing the fuel use of current aviation, reducing emissions, and a creating a cleaner environment.

According to the European Commission, airplane emissions currently account for about 3% of total EU Greenhouse gas emissions, and about 4% of world greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a pretty significant percentage that’s growing at a fast rate. By comparison, the emissions per person on a flight from London to New York, is roughly equivalent to a person in the EU heating their home for a whole year.

With electric aviation, these rising emissions could be reduced. It will make the ambitious EU goal of cutting greenhouse emissions to 40% below their 1990 levels by 2030, and to 80% of 1990 emissions by 2050 more feasible.

From the passenger’s perspective, electric aircraft are a massive win. The new planes would result in a cheaper ticket, decreased noise, and a higher rate of climb. With an electric engine, planes are able to maintain performance at higher altitudes where the air resistance is less, unlike combustion engines that operate less efficiently at these altitudes. The aircraft engine would therefore have to be less powerful to generate equivalent speed.

Photo courtesy Getty Images

Challenges

For all the hype and innovation surrounding the ideal of electric flight, there is still a long way to go before our commercial flights are powered by electric engines. The Burt-Rutan designed Long-EZ is an instance of electric flight in recent time. In 2012, as one of the fastest electric aircraft flown, the plane traveled at 202.6 mph, and carried a single passenger. Contrast that to a Boeing 787, which flies at 585 mph, and carries more than 242 passengers. There is still a long way to go, and at the current pace of battery and electrical engine technology it won’t be until 2030 that even hybrid electric technology is used in commercial aviation.

Currently there is a project underway known as the NASA Electric Aircraft Testbed. This project is looking at the current technology obstacles of electric flight. With this test bed, increased efficiency and reduced weight are the goals. The test bed can be adapted to power larger and larger engines as technology is improved.

Another challenge that exists is creating a practical cooling system that can be used. Thermal management for these systems will require a system that can reject anywhere from 50 to 800 kW of heat in flight. A cooling system is required for the integrated power module used for high power electronics. Materials will need to be developed for improved thermal performance, and a lightweight system developed for the power electronics cooling. Superconductivity and supercooled electronics will be required to reduce the electrical resistance of the aircraft.

The Batteries

The most significant limiting factor at this point is not the weight of the engines, or the design of the aircraft, but it is rather the batteries. Batteries at this point cannot provide the power-to-weight ratio needed for electric aviation to be feasible. Currently, jet fuel yields about 43 times more energy than an equivalent mass of battery. The electric aviation industry is making a big bet that energy storage technology will improve significantly in the future. It is possible with battery energy density rising by 5 to 8 percent per year. For batteries to be at a point where it is economically feasible to work in small-scale aviation they will need to achieve about five times their current density. The good thing, is that airplanes are becoming better designed, and will require less and less power as time progresses.

Once all this is figured out and solved another problem exists. How does one swap the batteries out quickly and efficiently enough to allow the planes a quick turnaround time from landing to then picking up new passengers and taking off? The best solution is battery swapping, but even this solution has its difficulties. Batteries have a higher maintenance costs than gas turbines do, and on top of that require replacement after only 1,500 charge cycles. In addition, electricity consumption is highest in the day when these batteries are needed to be charged.

Current Competition

Zunum Aero is a company backed by Boeing and JetBlue that has been working since 2013 on a family of 10 to 50 seat hybrid electric regional aircraft. They started development in October 2017 for a 12 seat aircraft, aiming to fly in 2020. The design includes a series of hybrid ducted fans that are powered by batteries alone for short trips and a range-extending generator providing 1 MW to 4-5 MW. A gas turbine would be used to drive two 550kW generators in order to extend the range of the plane to 700 nautical miles. In February 2018 it was announced that Zunum is building its first prototype.

Photo courtesy of Zunum

Airbus E-Fan X is being developed with Rolls-Royce and Siemens as a hybrid-electric airline demonstrator. Development of this aircraft is building on work completed with the Airbus E-fan, a prototype two-seater electric aircraft that was under development by Airbus. It uses on-board lithium-ion batteries to power two electric motors. First flown in 2014, the E-Fan has an endurance of 60 minutes. The E-Fan X does includes a motor and generator that are not cryogenically cooled and not superconducting leading to more than a 15% loss in efficiency. What they hope to do on the way to an all-electric plane is create a hybrid electric model capable of flying in 2020, while further developing the technology.

Photo courtesy of Airbus

Eviation Alice is an Israeli electric aircraft that is under development by Eviation Aircraft. This plane features three propellers, two on the wingtips and one in the rear of the plane body. The plane features an electric propulsion system and is developed from 95% composite materials.  The company was started in 2015 and is currently underway to manufacture the first prototype of its all electric business and commuter aircraft.

Photo courtesy of Eviation

Wright Electric is a startup aiming to create a commercial airliner that runs on batteries and for distances of under 300 miles. The company was founded in 2016, and has received venture capital from groups such as Silicon Valley accelerator Y combinatory. In September 2017, UK budget carrier EasyJet announced it was developing an electric 180 seater aircraft to be developed by 2027 with Wright Electric. So far the company has built a two seat proof of concept, which contains 600 lbs of batteries.

Photo courtesy of Wright Electric

Ampaire is a recent startup currently undertaking the big task of developing a retrofitted electric aircraft with the aim to be FAA certified by the end of 2020. The aircraft will be able to carry 7-9 passengers, and have a range of up to 100 miles. The company is hoping to develop a battery swapping system, and is hoping to test fly next year.

Joby Aviation has spent the last decade developing their own electric motors and their current VTOL design from the ground up. The company recently secured $100 million in series B financing to prepare for production and certification. According to reports, the new vehicle is being developed to fly as many as five people as far as 150 miles on a single electric charge. This is quite significant for an electric aircraft, and could be used within the commercial aviation area for very short haul flights.

Photo of Joby/NASA collaboration on X57 courtesy of NASA

As streets fill with electric cars in the coming years, let us not forget that there is still a long way to go until our skies are on the same path as our roads. As we follow the long path to successful electric aircraft, we will be reminded of the perilous journey that was followed to achieve successful electric vehicles. Once past the barriers of batteries, engines, and design, these planes will soon be taking off.

In 2008, the electric motor vehicle experienced a rebirth triggered by a rise in oil prices. Now in 2018, it is the time for another rebirth — in electrical aviation. Over the decades, advances have been made across the aviation field and on all fronts. In 1986, Burt Rutan made the first non-stop, unrefueled flight around the world.

Now, 30 years later another trip around the world was completed, marking the first electrical powered circumnavigation. The lofty journey started in Abu Dhabi and 16 months later landed back where its journey began. This plane, unlike others that have made the journey before, emitted no emissions and burned no fuel. Instead, it used solar panels, an electric motor and 4 massive 41 kWh lithium-ion batteries.

Called Solar Impulse 2, it changed the world of aviation when it completed its flight in 2016. Since then, the vision of an electrically powered commercial airplane has gone from a dream to a possibility.

A future that includes electric flight is a positive one, slashing the fuel use of current aviation, reducing emissions, and a creating a cleaner environment.

According to the European Commission, airplane emissions currently account for about 3% of total EU Greenhouse gas emissions, and about 4% of world greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a pretty significant percentage that’s growing at a fast rate. By comparison, the emissions per person on a flight from London to New York, is roughly equivalent to a person in the EU heating their home for a whole year.

With electric aviation, these rising emissions could be reduced. It will make the ambitious EU goal of cutting greenhouse emissions to 40% below their 1990 levels by 2030, and to 80% of 1990 emissions by 2050 more feasible.

From the passenger’s perspective, electric aircraft are a massive win. The new planes would result in a cheaper ticket, decreased noise, and a higher rate of climb. With an electric engine, planes are able to maintain performance at higher altitudes where the air resistance is less, unlike combustion engines that operate less efficiently at these altitudes. The aircraft engine would therefore have to be less powerful to generate equivalent speed.

Photo courtesy Getty Images

Challenges

For all the hype and innovation surrounding the ideal of electric flight, there is still a long way to go before our commercial flights are powered by electric engines. The Burt-Rutan designed Long-EZ is an instance of electric flight in recent time. In 2012, as one of the fastest electric aircraft flown, the plane traveled at 202.6 mph, and carried a single passenger. Contrast that to a Boeing 787, which flies at 585 mph, and carries more than 242 passengers. There is still a long way to go, and at the current pace of battery and electrical engine technology it won’t be until 2030 that even hybrid electric technology is used in commercial aviation.

Currently there is a project underway known as the NASA Electric Aircraft Testbed. This project is looking at the current technology obstacles of electric flight. With this test bed, increased efficiency and reduced weight are the goals. The test bed can be adapted to power larger and larger engines as technology is improved.

Another challenge that exists is creating a practical cooling system that can be used. Thermal management for these systems will require a system that can reject anywhere from 50 to 800 kW of heat in flight. A cooling system is required for the integrated power module used for high power electronics. Materials will need to be developed for improved thermal performance, and a lightweight system developed for the power electronics cooling. Superconductivity and supercooled electronics will be required to reduce the electrical resistance of the aircraft.

The Batteries

The most significant limiting factor at this point is not the weight of the engines, or the design of the aircraft, but it is rather the batteries. Batteries at this point cannot provide the power-to-weight ratio needed for electric aviation to be feasible. Currently, jet fuel yields about 43 times more energy than an equivalent mass of battery. The electric aviation industry is making a big bet that energy storage technology will improve significantly in the future. It is possible with battery energy density rising by 5 to 8 percent per year. For batteries to be at a point where it is economically feasible to work in small-scale aviation they will need to achieve about five times their current density. The good thing, is that airplanes are becoming better designed, and will require less and less power as time progresses.

Once all this is figured out and solved another problem exists. How does one swap the batteries out quickly and efficiently enough to allow the planes a quick turnaround time from landing to then picking up new passengers and taking off? The best solution is battery swapping, but even this solution has its difficulties. Batteries have a higher maintenance costs than gas turbines do, and on top of that require replacement after only 1,500 charge cycles. In addition, electricity consumption is highest in the day when these batteries are needed to be charged.

Current Competition

Zunum Aero is a company backed by Boeing and JetBlue that has been working since 2013 on a family of 10 to 50 seat hybrid electric regional aircraft. They started development in October 2017 for a 12 seat aircraft, aiming to fly in 2020. The design includes a series of hybrid ducted fans that are powered by batteries alone for short trips and a range-extending generator providing 1 MW to 4-5 MW. A gas turbine would be used to drive two 550kW generators in order to extend the range of the plane to 700 nautical miles. In February 2018 it was announced that Zunum is building its first prototype.

Photo courtesy of Zunum

Airbus E-Fan X is being developed with Rolls-Royce and Siemens as a hybrid-electric airline demonstrator. Development of this aircraft is building on work completed with the Airbus E-fan, a prototype two-seater electric aircraft that was under development by Airbus. It uses on-board lithium-ion batteries to power two electric motors. First flown in 2014, the E-Fan has an endurance of 60 minutes. The E-Fan X does includes a motor and generator that are not cryogenically cooled and not superconducting leading to more than a 15% loss in efficiency. What they hope to do on the way to an all-electric plane is create a hybrid electric model capable of flying in 2020, while further developing the technology.

Photo courtesy of Airbus

Eviation Alice is an Israeli electric aircraft that is under development by Eviation Aircraft. This plane features three propellers, two on the wingtips and one in the rear of the plane body. The plane features an electric propulsion system and is developed from 95% composite materials.  The company was started in 2015 and is currently underway to manufacture the first prototype of its all electric business and commuter aircraft.

Photo courtesy of Eviation

Wright Electric is a startup aiming to create a commercial airliner that runs on batteries and for distances of under 300 miles. The company was founded in 2016, and has received venture capital from groups such as Silicon Valley accelerator Y combinatory. In September 2017, UK budget carrier EasyJet announced it was developing an electric 180 seater aircraft to be developed by 2027 with Wright Electric. So far the company has built a two seat proof of concept, which contains 600 lbs of batteries.

Photo courtesy of Wright Electric

Ampaire is a recent startup currently undertaking the big task of developing a retrofitted electric aircraft with the aim to be FAA certified by the end of 2020. The aircraft will be able to carry 7-9 passengers, and have a range of up to 100 miles. The company is hoping to develop a battery swapping system, and is hoping to test fly next year.

Joby Aviation has spent the last decade developing their own electric motors and their current VTOL design from the ground up. The company recently secured $100 million in series B financing to prepare for production and certification. According to reports, the new vehicle is being developed to fly as many as five people as far as 150 miles on a single electric charge. This is quite significant for an electric aircraft, and could be used within the commercial aviation area for very short haul flights.

Photo of Joby/NASA collaboration on X57 courtesy of NASA

As streets fill with electric cars in the coming years, let us not forget that there is still a long way to go until our skies are on the same path as our roads. As we follow the long path to successful electric aircraft, we will be reminded of the perilous journey that was followed to achieve successful electric vehicles. Once past the barriers of batteries, engines, and design, these planes will soon be taking off.

“If a problem cannot be solved,” Donald Rumsfeld once wrote, “enlarge it.” I’m not about to praise him for his accomplishments, but he had a pretty good eye for diagnoses. Which takes us to the problem of urban transit. I complained recently that I didn’t care about scooter startups, because I couldn’t imagine cities ever changing in a way which made scooters really work. But lo, the scales have fallen from my eyes.

What may seem to be the problem: scooters are useful and fun for many, but discarded scooters are an unsightly mess. What’s actually the problem: cities are ruled by the iron fist of King Car. Even with maximum scooter distribution and zero regulation, the real estate occupied by scooters (and bicycles) will only ever be a vanishingly tiny fraction of a vanishingly tiny fraction of that occupied by roads and parking spaces.

The solution, obviously, is to allocate some of the latter to the former. No, not bike lanes. I mean, they have their place, but they’re cramped, they’re difficult to pass in, and their space is still only ever an adjunct to that allotted to the all-devouring demands of King Car. If you want a fourth form of transport (after cars, public transit, and good old walking) to really succeed, don’t put in more bike lanes. Do something much simpler. Ban cars from roads.

Hang on now. Don’t get apoplectic on me. I don’t mean all roads, by any means. I’m anything but anti-car. I own a car, drive frequently, and Lyft more than I should. But in the same way downtown plazas and streets are being converted into pedestrian-only zones — consider Times Square and Herald Square in NYC, (soon) Ste.-Catherine Street in Montreal, etc. — high-density cities should begin to convert some entire multi-lane roads to thoroughfares for two-wheeled electric/manual vehicles only.

If optimized correctly, the number of cars you’d get off the road because of reduced demand for Uber and Lyft should vastly outweigh the traffic displacement and reduced number of parking spaces. Cars will still be able to cross, of course, at lights synchronized for the reduced pace of two-wheelers. Bike lanes, instead of being haphazardly strewn about in a random and often disconnected series of routes, will become feeders for these scooter/bicycle superhighways. And of course streets not shared with cars will be vastly safer.

Add a congestion charge, such that people are incentivized to park their scooters/bikes either along these arteries or in designated storage zones scattered along bike lanes, and the pull of economic gravity will pull them away from cluttered sidewalks and towards well-understood, well-contained spaces. Businesses might complain — until they realize they have vastly more traffic than before.

Think big. Think Park and Amsterdam Avenues in Manhattan; Turk and Sutter/Kearny in San Francisco; Church / Davenport / DuPont in Toronto. But realize at the same time that you’re thinking small; just a couple of roads apiece, in cities which have been dominated by cars and trucks for so long that alternatives seem impossible, unthinkable, laughable. But thinking that way is a form of learned helplessness. Change for the better is entirely possible on physical, financial, technical, and/engineering levels. All that cities lack is imagination and public will.

Smartphones have disrupted transportation, payments and communication. But the underlying technology has tangentially changed a completely different sector: satellites.

The advances made in miniaturizing technologies that put a computer in your pocket — cameras, batteries, processors, radio antennas — have also made it easier and cheaper for entrepreneurs to launch matter into space. And investors are taking notice.

The chart below shows worldwide venture and PE investment in satellite technology companies.

Venture investment into satellite companies has been on a rocket-like trajectory since 2012, following a long fallow period. Although it isn’t pictured here, the last “major” satellite boom peaked in 2006, when there were five venture deals closed with satellite companies worldwide, according to our data set.

Let’s take a look at some of the major players in the satellite sector. Below you can find a chart showing the most-funded private companies currently operating in the industry. We ranked them by total funding, which includes private equity rounds raised after traditional VC rounds (like seed, Series A, etc.).

While serverless computing isn’t new, it has reached an interesting place in its development. As developers begin to see the value of serverless architecture, a whole new startup ecosystem could begin to develop around it.

Serverless isn’t exactly serverless at all, but it does enable a developer to set event triggers and leave the infrastructure requirements completely to the cloud provider. The vendor delivers exactly the right amount of compute, storage and memory and the developer doesn’t even have to think about it (or code for it).

That sounds ideal on its face, but as with every new technology, for each solution there is a set of new problems and those issues tend to represent openings for enterprising entrepreneurs. That could mean big opportunities in the coming years for companies building security, tooling, libraries, APIs, monitoring and a whole host of tools serverless will likely require as it evolves.

Building layers of abstraction

In the beginning we had physical servers, but there was lots of wasted capacity. That led to the development of virtual machines, which enabled IT to take a single physical server and divide it into multiple virtual ones. While that was a huge breakthrough for its time, helped launch successful companies like VMware and paved the way for cloud computing, it was the only beginning.

Then came containers, which really began to take off with the development of Docker and Kubernetes, two open source platforms. Containers enable the developer to break down a large monolithic program into discrete pieces, which helps it run more efficiently. More recently, we’ve seen the rise of serverless or event-driven computing. In this case, the whole idea of infrastructure itself is being abstracted away.

Photo: shutterjack/Getty Images

While it’s not truly serverless, since you need underlying compute, storage and memory to run a program, it is removing the need for developers to worry about servers. Today, so much coding goes into connecting the program’s components to run on whatever hardware (virtual or otherwise) you have designated. With serverless, the cloud vendor handles all of that for the developer.

All of the major vendors have launched serverless products with AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions and Microsoft Azure Functions all offering a similar approach. But it has the potential to be more than just another way to code. It could eventually shift the way we think about programming and its relation to the underlying infrastructure altogether.

It’s important to understand that we aren’t quite there yet, and a lot of work still needs to happen for serverless to really take hold, but it has enormous potential to be a startup feeder system in coming years and it’s certainly caught the attention of investors looking for the next big thing.

Removing another barrier to entry

Tim Wagner, general manager for AWS Lambda, says the primary advantage of serverless computing is that it allows developers to strip away all of the challenges associated with managing servers. “So there is no provisioning, deploying patching or monitoring — all those details at the the server and operating system level go away,” he explained.

He says this allows developers to reduce the entire coding process to the function level. The programmer defines the event or function and the cloud provider figures out the exact amount of underlying infrastructure required to run it. Mind you, this can be as little as a single line of code.

Colin Anderson/Getty Images

Sarah Guo, a partner at Greylock Partners, who invests in early stage companies sees serverless computing as offering a way for developers to concentrate on just the code by leaving the infrastructure management to the provider. “If you look at one of the amazing things cloud computing platforms have done, it has just taken a lot of the expertise and cost that you need to build a scalable service and shifted it to [the cloud provider],” she said. Serverless takes that concept and shifts it even further by allowing developers to concentrate solely on the user’s needs without having to worry about what it takes to actually run the program.

Survey says…

Cloud computing company Digital Ocean recently surveyed over 4800 IT pros, of which 55 percent identified themselves as developers. When asked about serverless, nearly half of respondents reported they didn’t fully understand the serverless concept. On the other hand, they certainly recognized the importance of learning more about it with 81 percent reporting that they plan to do further research this year.

When asked if they had deployed a serverless application in the last year, not surprisingly about two-thirds reported they hadn’t. This was consistent across regions with India reporting a slightly higher rate of serverless adoption.

Graph: Digital Ocean

Of those using serverless, Digital Ocean found that AWS was by far the most popular service with 58 percent of respondents reporting Lambda was their chosen tool, followed by Google Cloud Functions with 23 percent and Microsoft Azure Functions further back at 10 percent.

Interestingly enough, one of the reasons that respondents reported a reluctance to begin adopting serverless was a lack of tooling. “One of the biggest challenges developers report when it comes to serverless is monitoring and debugging,” the report stated. That lack of visibility, however could also represent an opening for startups.

Creating ecosystems

The thing about abstraction is that it simplifies operations on one level, but it also creates a new set of requirements, some expected and some that might surprise as a new way of programming scales. This lack of tooling could potentially hinder the development, but more often than not when necessity calls, it can stimulate the development of a new set of instrumentation.

This is certainly something that Guo recognizes as an investor. “I think there is a lot of promise as we improve a bunch of things around making it easier for developers to access serverless, while expanding the use cases, and concentrating on issues like visibility and security, which are all [issues] when you give more and more control of [the infrastructure] to someone else,” she said.

Photo: shylendrahoode/Getty Images

Ping Li, general partner at Accel also sees an opportunity here for investors. “I think the reality is that anytime there’s a kind of shift from a developer application perspective, there’s an opportunity to create a new set of tools or products that help you enable those platforms,” he said.

Li says the promise is there, but it won’t happen right away because there needs to be a critical mass of developers using serverless methodologies first. “I would say that we are definitely interested in serverless in that we believe it’s going to be a big part of how applications will be built in the future, but it’s still in its early stages,” Ping said.

S. Somasgear, managing director at Madrona Ventures says that even as serverless removes complexity, it creates a new set of issues, which in turn creates openings for startups. “It is complicated because we are trying to create this abstraction layer over the underlying infrastructure and telling the developers that you don’t need to worry about it. But that means, there are a lot of tools that have to exist in place — whether it is development tools, deployment tools, debugging tools or monitoring tools — that enable the developer to know certain things are happening when you’re operating in a serverless environment.

Beyond tooling

Having that visibility in a serverless world is a real challenge, but it is not the only opening here. There are also opportunities for trigger or function libraries or companies akin to Twilio or Stripe, which offer easy API access to a set of functionality without having a particular expertise like communications or payment gateways There could be similar analogous needs in the serverless world.

Companies are beginning to take advantage of serverless computing to find new ways of solving problems. Over time, we should begin to see more developer momentum toward this approach and more tools develop.

While it is early days, as Guo says, it’s not as though developers love running infrastructure. It’s just been a necessity. “I think will be very interesting. I just think we’re still very early in the ecosystem,” she said. Yet certainly the potential is there if the pieces fall into place and programmer momentum builds around this way of developing applications for it to really take off and for a startup ecosystem to follow.

While serverless computing isn’t new, it has reached an interesting place in its development. As developers begin to see the value of serverless architecture, a whole new startup ecosystem could begin to develop around it.

Serverless isn’t exactly serverless at all, but it does enable a developer to set event triggers and leave the infrastructure requirements completely to the cloud provider. The vendor delivers exactly the right amount of compute, storage and memory and the developer doesn’t even have to think about it (or code for it).

That sounds ideal on its face, but as with every new technology, for each solution there is a set of new problems and those issues tend to represent openings for enterprising entrepreneurs. That could mean big opportunities in the coming years for companies building security, tooling, libraries, APIs, monitoring and a whole host of tools serverless will likely require as it evolves.

Building layers of abstraction

In the beginning we had physical servers, but there was lots of wasted capacity. That led to the development of virtual machines, which enabled IT to take a single physical server and divide it into multiple virtual ones. While that was a huge breakthrough for its time, helped launch successful companies like VMware and paved the way for cloud computing, it was the only beginning.

Then came containers, which really began to take off with the development of Docker and Kubernetes, two open source platforms. Containers enable the developer to break down a large monolithic program into discrete pieces, which helps it run more efficiently. More recently, we’ve seen the rise of serverless or event-driven computing. In this case, the whole idea of infrastructure itself is being abstracted away.

Photo: shutterjack/Getty Images

While it’s not truly serverless, since you need underlying compute, storage and memory to run a program, it is removing the need for developers to worry about servers. Today, so much coding goes into connecting the program’s components to run on whatever hardware (virtual or otherwise) you have designated. With serverless, the cloud vendor handles all of that for the developer.

All of the major vendors have launched serverless products with AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions and Microsoft Azure Functions all offering a similar approach. But it has the potential to be more than just another way to code. It could eventually shift the way we think about programming and its relation to the underlying infrastructure altogether.

It’s important to understand that we aren’t quite there yet, and a lot of work still needs to happen for serverless to really take hold, but it has enormous potential to be a startup feeder system in coming years and it’s certainly caught the attention of investors looking for the next big thing.

Removing another barrier to entry

Tim Wagner, general manager for AWS Lambda, says the primary advantage of serverless computing is that it allows developers to strip away all of the challenges associated with managing servers. “So there is no provisioning, deploying patching or monitoring — all those details at the the server and operating system level go away,” he explained.

He says this allows developers to reduce the entire coding process to the function level. The programmer defines the event or function and the cloud provider figures out the exact amount of underlying infrastructure required to run it. Mind you, this can be as little as a single line of code.

Colin Anderson/Getty Images

Sarah Guo, a partner at Greylock Partners, who invests in early stage companies sees serverless computing as offering a way for developers to concentrate on just the code by leaving the infrastructure management to the provider. “If you look at one of the amazing things cloud computing platforms have done, it has just taken a lot of the expertise and cost that you need to build a scalable service and shifted it to [the cloud provider],” she said. Serverless takes that concept and shifts it even further by allowing developers to concentrate solely on the user’s needs without having to worry about what it takes to actually run the program.

Survey says…

Cloud computing company Digital Ocean recently surveyed over 4800 IT pros, of which 55 percent identified themselves as developers. When asked about serverless, nearly half of respondents reported they didn’t fully understand the serverless concept. On the other hand, they certainly recognized the importance of learning more about it with 81 percent reporting that they plan to do further research this year.

When asked if they had deployed a serverless application in the last year, not surprisingly about two-thirds reported they hadn’t. This was consistent across regions with India reporting a slightly higher rate of serverless adoption.

Graph: Digital Ocean

Of those using serverless, Digital Ocean found that AWS was by far the most popular service with 58 percent of respondents reporting Lambda was their chosen tool, followed by Google Cloud Functions with 23 percent and Microsoft Azure Functions further back at 10 percent.

Interestingly enough, one of the reasons that respondents reported a reluctance to begin adopting serverless was a lack of tooling. “One of the biggest challenges developers report when it comes to serverless is monitoring and debugging,” the report stated. That lack of visibility, however could also represent an opening for startups.

Creating ecosystems

The thing about abstraction is that it simplifies operations on one level, but it also creates a new set of requirements, some expected and some that might surprise as a new way of programming scales. This lack of tooling could potentially hinder the development, but more often than not when necessity calls, it can stimulate the development of a new set of instrumentation.

This is certainly something that Guo recognizes as an investor. “I think there is a lot of promise as we improve a bunch of things around making it easier for developers to access serverless, while expanding the use cases, and concentrating on issues like visibility and security, which are all [issues] when you give more and more control of [the infrastructure] to someone else,” she said.

Photo: shylendrahoode/Getty Images

Ping Li, general partner at Accel also sees an opportunity here for investors. “I think the reality is that anytime there’s a kind of shift from a developer application perspective, there’s an opportunity to create a new set of tools or products that help you enable those platforms,” he said.

Li says the promise is there, but it won’t happen right away because there needs to be a critical mass of developers using serverless methodologies first. “I would say that we are definitely interested in serverless in that we believe it’s going to be a big part of how applications will be built in the future, but it’s still in its early stages,” Ping said.

S. Somasgear, managing director at Madrona Ventures says that even as serverless removes complexity, it creates a new set of issues, which in turn creates openings for startups. “It is complicated because we are trying to create this abstraction layer over the underlying infrastructure and telling the developers that you don’t need to worry about it. But that means, there are a lot of tools that have to exist in place — whether it is development tools, deployment tools, debugging tools or monitoring tools — that enable the developer to know certain things are happening when you’re operating in a serverless environment.

Beyond tooling

Having that visibility in a serverless world is a real challenge, but it is not the only opening here. There are also opportunities for trigger or function libraries or companies akin to Twilio or Stripe, which offer easy API access to a set of functionality without having a particular expertise like communications or payment gateways There could be similar analogous needs in the serverless world.

Companies are beginning to take advantage of serverless computing to find new ways of solving problems. Over time, we should begin to see more developer momentum toward this approach and more tools develop.

While it is early days, as Guo says, it’s not as though developers love running infrastructure. It’s just been a necessity. “I think will be very interesting. I just think we’re still very early in the ecosystem,” she said. Yet certainly the potential is there if the pieces fall into place and programmer momentum builds around this way of developing applications for it to really take off and for a startup ecosystem to follow.