Year: 2018

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week was something of a first for the crew, twice. First, we had two guests on the show, and, also, we only made it through two and a half topics. The former is good, the latter is, well, we’ll see.

So, this week Matthew Lynley and I were joined by David Chao, co-founder and general partner at DCM, and Steve Vassallo, a general partner at Foundation Capital. Points to both for being guinea pigs.

Heading into our first topic I’m sorry to inform you that, at least in terms of Equity, scooters are the new Uber. So, we wound up talking about both this week. We started with the fact that Bird is raising new capital at an even more staggering valuation than before ($2 billion!), and that Lime is working to raise a truckload of capital itself. (Reports vary, but it’s probably a $250 million equity round at around a $750 million valuation. There may also be some debt in the mix for Lime. More when we lock that down.)

And, as Chao’s firm is an investor in the space, we had even more to chew on.

Next up we dug into the massive new Opendoor round. The firm’s new $325 million puts it into a solid position to help people sell their houses. Which markets are the best fit was something for us to unspool, along with public market comps, such as they are. But most critical, at least in my view, was the idea of risk. On that point Vassallo made a reasonable argument regarding stress testing. We’ll see.

And finally, we touched on Meituan’s impending IPO, and how it came to be.

Thanks for sticking with Equity after all this time. We’ll be back next week with another round of chatter about the latest, greatest, and dumbest that tech has to offer.

While brand safety and fraud prevention have been big topics in the online ad industry over the past couple years, Cheq CEO Guy Tytunovich argued that “first generation solutions for ad verification” aren’t good enough.

The problem, Tytunovich said, is that existing products use sampling to alert advertisers to issues “after the fact.” Compare this to credit card fraud — if the credit card company only alerted you long after the fraud had occurred, “You’re not going to be happy with that kind of answer.”

At Cheq, Tytunovich and his team have developed an approach that uses artificial intelligence to deliver what he calls “autonomous brand safety” — the idea is that when an ad is being served, Cheq can detect whether it might be a fraudulent impression that will only be seen by bots, or if it might show up next to content that a brand doesn’t want to be associated with. If there’s an issue, Tytunovich said, “We block [the ad] from being served in real time.”

Beforehand, advertisers set up their own ad placement guidelines, and afterwards, they can see the reason why individual ads didn’t get served.

Cheq is announcing that it has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Battery Ventures . Tytunovich said that 80 percent of the Cheq team consists of developers, and that most of the funding will go towards further product development.

If the Cheq approach really is so much better, why aren’t bigger, better-funded companies doing the same thing? Tytunovich pointed to his experience, and his team’s experience, in the Israel Defense Forces, where he said “they teach you to compensate for a lack of scale, of manpower, by focusing on automation and speed.”

Similarly, Tytunovich said that at Cheq, “the name of the game is speed.”

“A lot about our underlying technology lies around the speed of the data crunching,” he added. “We look at around 700 data parameters per impression … We need to be able to take all that data, analyze it and do it in real time.”

Cheq has offices in Tokyo, New York and Tel Aviv. Tytunovich said it’s currently focused on the American and Japanese markets — customers listed on the Cheq website include Coca Cola, Turner and Mercedes-Benz. Update: A spokesperson clarified that those companies are listed on the Cheq website because Chew participated with them in The Bridge program.

We all know that in the near future humanity will come to a crossroads. With 99% of the world’s population currently tasked with creating memes and/or dank memes, what will happen when computers get better at it than humans? Researchers may have just found out.

Using machine learning, a pair of Stanford researchers, Abel L. Peirson V and E. Meltem Tolunay, have created a system that automatically generates memes including the ones visible above. Their system, they’ve discovered “produces original memes that cannot on the whole be differentiated from real ones.”

You can read the report here.

The system uses a pre-trained Inception-v3 network using the long short-term memory model to produce captions that are applicable to a particular picture. Humans then assess the humor of the meme, rewarding the system for true LOLs.

The researchers trained the network with “400.000 image, label and caption triplets with 2600 unique image-label pairs” including funny memes generated by actual humans. The system then recreates memes in a similar vein.

Does it work? Yes, it does, but I doubt it will replace human meme-workers any time soon. Humanity, it seems, is safe… for now.

We acknowledge that one of the greatest challenges in our project and other language modeling tasks is to capture humor, which varies across people and cultures. In fact, this constitutes a research area on its own, and accordingly new research ideas on this problem should be incorporated into the meme generation project in the future. One example would be to train on a dataset that includes the break point in the text between upper and lower for the image. These were chosen manually here and are important for the humor impact of the meme. If the model could learn the breakpoints this would be a huge improvement and could fully automate the meme generation. Another avenue for future work would be to explore visual attention mechanisms that operate on the images and investigate their role in meme generation tasks.

Sadly, however, we still cannot trust our robotic meme overlords not to be nasty.

“Lastly we note that there was a bias in the dataset towards expletive, racist and sexist memes, so yet another possibility for future work would be to address this bias,” wrote the researchers.

The UK High Court has granted a union permission to challenge Deliveroo’s opposition to collective bargaining for its couriers on human rights grounds.

The IWGB union argues that couriers for the restaurant food delivery company should be classed as workers — who would then have basic employment rights such as the minimum wage, holiday pay and collective bargaining rights. Rights that gig economy business models are typically structured to avoid being saddled with.

Last year the union challenged Deliveroo’s employment classification of couriers. But a tribunal, the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC), ruled the couriers could not be considered workers — finding they were independent contractors on the grounds that they had a genuine right to find a substitute to do their job for them.

Today the High Court partially lifted a legal block by granting permission for the union to seek a judicial review of the CAC ruling on human rights grounds.

Although the judge only gave permission for a judicial review on “limited grounds”, relating to whether certain categories of self-employed individuals should have the ability to unionize.

“We have been given permission to argue that Deliveroo is breaching the human rights of our members. This is no longer an employment rights matter, this is a human rights matter,” a union rep said outside court after the ruling.

“The IWGB was granted permission on the basis of its human rights argument to the effect that Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights means the British collective bargaining laws need to be applied in a way which covers Deliveroo Riders. If won, the case will have massive ramifications for the so-called ‘gig-economy’ and human rights in the UK,” the union added in a statement.

Collective bargaining rights for independent workers certainly could change the gig economy power game.

In 2016, for example, a group of Deliveroo couriers in London organized protests and strikes, after the company tried to impose a new pricing model. And Deliveroo stepped back from doing so after those protests.

Commenting on the High Court decision today, a Deliveroo spokesperson said: “The court has allowed a limited challenge on human rights grounds. Deliveroo has long argued that the self-employed should have access to greater protections, and we welcome any debate on how that can best be achieved.”

On the wider workers rights front, the union had argued the CAC erred in the facts and a matter of law when it ruled that the substitution clause in Deliveroo’s contract was genuine and therefore sufficient to make the couriers independent contractors. Though the High Court judge was evidently not swayed.

The union has been crowdfunding its challenge to Deliveroo via the Crowdjustice platform — and has raised just under half of the £50k target so far. However it appears that the judge also declined to put a cap on costs for the case, as the union had hoped.

The union had also sought to challenge the tribunal judgement by making referral to the Supreme Court’s decision this week against Pimlico Plumbers — another gig economy platform rights case — but Deliveroo points out the judge deemed that “not arguable”.

“The decision was reached having considered the recent judgment of the Supreme Court in the Pimlico Plumbers case, and emphatically rejects the union’s challenge based on this judgment,” said a spokesperson.

“Today’s decision has clearly upheld the central finding of the CAC, which is that Deliveroo riders are self-employed. This is good news for Deliveroo riders who value the ability to choose when and where to work.”

In the UK a group of Uber drivers successfully challenged the company’s classification of them as self-employed at a tribunal in 2016, going on to defend the decision against Uber’s first appeal.

And, in that case, although Uber continues to appeal the tribunal ruling, the company has pretty steadily been expanding the insurance products it offers drivers in the region.

Meanwhile the UK government is conducting a review of employment law to take account of tech-fueled shifts in work — and with the stated aim of expanding rights to more working people.

The UK High Court has granted a union permission to challenge Deliveroo’s opposition to collective bargaining for its couriers on human rights grounds.

The IWGB union argues that couriers for the restaurant food delivery company should be classed as workers — who would then have basic employment rights such as the minimum wage, holiday pay and collective bargaining rights. Rights that gig economy business models are typically structured to avoid being saddled with.

Last year the union challenged Deliveroo’s employment classification of couriers. But a tribunal, the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC), ruled the couriers could not be considered workers — finding they were independent contractors on the grounds that they had a genuine right to find a substitute to do their job for them.

Today the High Court partially lifted a legal block by granting permission for the union to seek a judicial review of the CAC ruling on human rights grounds.

Although the judge only gave permission for a judicial review on “limited grounds”, relating to whether certain categories of self-employed individuals should have the ability to unionize.

“We have been given permission to argue that Deliveroo is breaching the human rights of our members. This is no longer an employment rights matter, this is a human rights matter,” a union rep said outside court after the ruling.

“The IWGB was granted permission on the basis of its human rights argument to the effect that Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights means the British collective bargaining laws need to be applied in a way which covers Deliveroo Riders. If won, the case will have massive ramifications for the so-called ‘gig-economy’ and human rights in the UK,” the union added in a statement.

Collective bargaining rights for independent workers certainly could change the gig economy power game.

In 2016, for example, a group of Deliveroo couriers in London organized protests and strikes, after the company tried to impose a new pricing model. And Deliveroo stepped back from doing so after those protests.

Commenting on the High Court decision today, a Deliveroo spokesperson said: “The court has allowed a limited challenge on human rights grounds. Deliveroo has long argued that the self-employed should have access to greater protections, and we welcome any debate on how that can best be achieved.”

On the wider workers rights front, the union had argued the CAC erred in the facts and a matter of law when it ruled that the substitution clause in Deliveroo’s contract was genuine and therefore sufficient to make the couriers independent contractors. Though the High Court judge was evidently not swayed.

The union has been crowdfunding its challenge to Deliveroo via the Crowdjustice platform — and has raised just under half of the £50k target so far. However it appears that the judge also declined to put a cap on costs for the case, as the union had hoped.

The union had also sought to challenge the tribunal judgement by making referral to the Supreme Court’s decision this week against Pimlico Plumbers — another gig economy platform rights case — but Deliveroo points out the judge deemed that “not arguable”.

“The decision was reached having considered the recent judgment of the Supreme Court in the Pimlico Plumbers case, and emphatically rejects the union’s challenge based on this judgment,” said a spokesperson.

“Today’s decision has clearly upheld the central finding of the CAC, which is that Deliveroo riders are self-employed. This is good news for Deliveroo riders who value the ability to choose when and where to work.”

In the UK a group of Uber drivers successfully challenged the company’s classification of them as self-employed at a tribunal in 2016, going on to defend the decision against Uber’s first appeal.

And, in that case, although Uber continues to appeal the tribunal ruling, the company has pretty steadily been expanding the insurance products it offers drivers in the region.

Meanwhile the UK government is conducting a review of employment law to take account of tech-fueled shifts in work — and with the stated aim of expanding rights to more working people.

The Europas Awards and Unconference for tech and crypto startups will be held on July 3, in London. Tickets are selling fast, so grab yours here to mingle with the cream of Europe’s startups, VCs and entrepreneurs. The event is run in association with TechCrunch, and all attendees get first access to offers for TechCrunch events later this year.

We have some amazing speakers coming, panels and breakout sessions, and even a way to get your ticket for free.

The public online voting, running for the last month, and the Europas Advisory Board of judges have submitted their results. The two have been merged and we now have our finalists. The winners will be revealed on the night.

A huge thanks to our awesome sponsors so far:
Bayer
Fieldhouse Associates
JAG Shaw Baker
Orrick
IoT Tribe
Outlier Ventures
Coinweb
Malta Blockchain Summit
Burlington PR
Barclays
CEW
ihorizon
Bizzabo
Isotoma
TechCrunch
Colombus Capital
AiPod

If there are any last minute requests to sponsor the awards and get in front of the best of Europe, you can email Petra@TheEuropas.com

The Europas will take place at a ridiculously cool London venue, The Brewery, in the heart of London’s ‘Tech City’.

Below you will find lots more information, but for now, here are our finalists for the awards, all of whom are listed on Crunchbase should you require more information.

Hottest Media/Entertainment Startup
Hatch Entertainment https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/hatch-entertainment
Azoomee https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/azoomee
Encore https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/encore-technologies
ACast https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/acast
Devialet https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/devialet
Blendle https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/blendle

Hottest E-commerce/Retail Startup
Deliveroo https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/deliveroo
bloom and wild https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bloom-wild#/entity
Wonderbly
Catawiki https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/catawiki
Eve (Mattress)
Farmdrop

Hottest FinTech Startup
Monzo https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/mondo
Curve https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/curve
YoYo Wallet https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/yoyo
Habito https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/hey-habito
Starling Bank https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/starling-3
Revolut

Hottest Games Startup
Supercell http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/supercell
Small Giant Games https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/small-giant-games
Seriously.com https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/seriously
DOJO Madness https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/dojo-madness#/entity
Bossa Studios https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bossa-studios
Space Ape Games https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-ape

Hottest Startup Accelerator
Entrepreneur First https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/entrepreneur-first
CyLon (Cyber London) https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/cylon#
Startup Bootcamp https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/startupbootcamp
Techstars London https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/techstars
Founders Factory https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/founders-factory-2#
IOT Tribe https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/iot-tribe#section-overview

Hottest Marketing/AdTech Startup
Codec https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/codec-london#/entity
Duel https://www.crunchbase.com/product/duel#/entity
AppsFlyer https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/appsflyer#/entity
Tictail https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/tictail#/entity
Seenit https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/seenit#section-overview
Realeyes https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/realeyes

Hottest Education Startup
Peergrade https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/peergrade
Lexplore https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/optelexia
Lingumi https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/lingumi
CENTURY Tech https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/century-tech-2
ZZish https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/zzish
Aula Education https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/aulaeducation

Hottest Mobile Startup
Happn https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/happn
Wire https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/wire
Huggle https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/huggle
Depop https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/depop
Fatmap

Hottest Enterprise, SaaS or B2B Startup
Signal Media https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/signal-media-ltd#/entity
Kalo https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/lystable#/entity
talent.io https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/talent-io
deepstreamHub https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/deepstreamhub-2
Charlie HR https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/charliehr
UiPath https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uipath

Hottest Hardware Startup
MysteryVibe https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/mysteryvibe
Kokoon https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kokoon-technology
Kano Computing https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kano-computing
Lilium https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/lilium-aviation#/entity
Ultrahaptics https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ultrahaptics
Ava https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ava-3

Hottest Platform Economy / Marketplace
DRIVY https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/voiturelib#/entity
Syft https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/syft-app
Glovo App https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/glovo-app#/entity
LoveCrafts https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/lovecrafts#/entity
Lemoncat https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/lemoncat-gmbh
Stowga https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/stowga

Hottest Health Startup
Lifesum http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/lifesum
Echo https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/echo-8#/entity
Ada Health http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/adahealth#/entity
Lantum https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/network-locum
Tictrac https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/tictrac#section-overview
Touch Surgery https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/toughsurgery

Hottest Cyber Security Startup
Argus Cyber https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/argus-cyber-security
Fabric https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/fabric-3#/entity
Vchain Technology https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/vchain-technology
PixelPin https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pixelpin#/entity
APERIO Systems https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/aperio-systems#/entity
Digital Shadows https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/digital-shadows

Hottest Travel & Mobility Startup
Daytrip http://www.ondaytrip.com http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/daytrip
SilverRail https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/silverrail-technologies#/entity
KOMPAS https://www.kompasapp.com; http://www.kompas.download
Hole19 https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/hole-19
Blacklane https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/blacklane
Seatfrog https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/seatfrog

Hottest Internet of Things Startup
Smarter https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/smarter#/entity
HUB Controls https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/hub-controls-ltd
Kontakt http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kontakt
Withings http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/withings
Pycom https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pycom-ltd#/entity
Puick

Hottest Technology Innovation
Bragi (The Dash) https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bragi
Ultrahaptics https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ultrahaptics
Speechmatics https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/speechmatics#/entity
WeTransfer https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/wetransfer#/entity
Devialet https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/devialet#/entity
SNIPS

Hottest FashionTech Startup
VideDressing http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/videdressing
Snaps https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/snupps#/entity
Metail https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/metail
21Buttons https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/21buttons#/entity
Outfittery https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/outfittery#/entity

Hottest Tech For Good
OLIO https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/olio#/entity
BuffaloGrid https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/buffalogrid
Neighbourly https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/neighbourly
Open Bionics https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/open-bionics#/entity
Chatterbox https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/chatterbox
FoodCloud

Hottest A.I. Startup
DigitalGenius https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/digital-genius-artificial-intelligence#/entity
Aire https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/aire#/entity
Cleo https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/cleo-ai
Black Swan Data https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/black-swan-data
StatusToday https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/statustoday
Benovolent AI

Fastest Rising Startup Of The Year
Revolut https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/revolut
Aircall
MessageBird
TransferGo
DoctoLib
Onfido

Hottest GreenTech Startup of The Year
Viva Labs https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/viva-labs
VoltStorage https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/volt-storage#/entity
Bulb https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bulb-2
Asperitas www.crunchbase.com/organization/asperitas
Metalectrique https://www.metalectrique.com/

Hottest Startup Founders
Jutta Steiner, Polkadot
Sriram Subramanian, Tom Carter, Ultrahaptics
Joel Gibbard + Samantha Payne, Open Bionics
Sean Murray, Hello Games
Anna Alex + Julia Bosch, Outfittery
Jasmine Anteunis Co-founder, Recast.ai

Hottest CEO of the Year
Nicole Eagan, Darktrace
Taavet Hinrinkus and Kristo Käärmann CEOs & Co-founders, TransferWise
Demis Hassabis, CEO & Founder, DeepMind
John Earner, CEO, Space Ape Games
Pieter van der Does, Adyen
Ismail Ahmed, World Remit

Best Angel/Seed Investor of the Year
Scott Sage https://angel.co/scott-sage
Reshma Sohoni and Carlos Eduardo Espinal, Seedcamp
Nic Brisbourne, Forward Partners
Taavet Hinrikus
Sarah Turner https://angel.co/sarah-turner
Simon Murdoch https://www.crunchbase.com/person/simon-murdoch

Hottest VC Investor of the Year
Pär-Jörgen Pärson, Northzone
Christian Hernandez, Whitestar Capital https://angel.co/christianhern
Sonali De Ryker, Accel Partners https://www.crunchbase.com/person/sonali-de-rycker
Eileen Burbidge, Passion Capital https://angel.co/eileentso
Robert Moffat, Balderton Capital https://angel.co/robmoff
Saul Klein, LocalGlobe

Hottest Blockchain/Crypto Startup Founder
Jez San, FunFair
Alexander Ivanov, Waves
Julien Bouteloup, Flying Carpet
Balazs Deme, Herdius
Mona El Isa, Melonport

Hottest Blockchain Protocol Project
BigchainDB https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bigchaindb#/entity
Aragon https://aragon.one/
Polkadot.io – Berlin – https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/polkadot
Melonport.com – Zug, Switzerland – https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/melonport
Radix https://www.radixdlt.com/

Hottest Blockchain DApp
Ascribe https://www.ascribe.io/
Verisart https://www.verisart.com
Dovu.io https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/dovu#section-overview
Codex Protocol
Flying Carpet

Hottest Corporate Blockchain Project
Lufthansa / Winding Tree ICO
EU / European Blockchain Partnership
EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum
IBM + Deutsche Bank, HSBC, KBC, Natixis, Rabobank, Société Générale and UniCredit
Hyperledger (Linux Foundation)
Billon https://billongroup.com/

Hottest Blockchain Investor (Europe)
KR1 https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kryptonite1
Blueyard Capital https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/blueyard-capital
Outlier Ventures https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/outlier-ventures-ltd-llp
Fabric Ventures, https://www.fabric.vc/
Kenetic Capital

Hottest Blockchain ICO (Europe)
Status
Polkadot
Bancor
Cosmos
Tezos

Hottest Financial Crypto Project
Monax https://monax.io/
Bitwala https://www.bitwala.io/
IOTA https://iota.org/
Cashaa https://cashaa.com/

Hottest Blockchain for Good Project
United Nations (UN) Jordan ethereum project
Alice https://alice.si/
ID Box https://www.idbox.io/

Hottest Blockchain Identity Project
Qadre https://www.qad.re/
Trunomi www.trunomi.com
Uniquid http://uniquid.com
Evernym https://www.evernym.com/

The Europas Grand Prix Award
Supercell
Adyen
Unity
Transferwise
Zalando

The Europas Awards and Unconference for tech and crypto startups will be held on July 3, in London. Tickets are selling fast, so grab yours here to mingle with the cream of Europe’s startups, VCs and entrepreneurs. The event is run in association with TechCrunch, and all attendees get first access to offers for TechCrunch events later this year.

We have some amazing speakers coming, panels and breakout sessions, and even a way to get your ticket for free.

The public online voting, running for the last month, and the Europas Advisory Board of judges have submitted their results. The two have been merged and we now have our finalists. The winners will be revealed on the night.

A huge thanks to our awesome sponsors so far:
Bayer
Fieldhouse Associates
JAG Shaw Baker
Orrick
IoT Tribe
Outlier Ventures
Coinweb
Malta Blockchain Summit
Burlington PR
Barclays
CEW
ihorizon
Bizzabo
Isotoma
TechCrunch
Colombus Capital
AiPod

If there are any last minute requests to sponsor the awards and get in front of the best of Europe, you can email Petra@TheEuropas.com

The Europas will take place at a ridiculously cool London venue, The Brewery, in the heart of London’s ‘Tech City’.

Below you will find lots more information, but for now, here are our finalists for the awards, all of whom are listed on Crunchbase should you require more information.

Hottest Media/Entertainment Startup
Hatch Entertainment https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/hatch-entertainment
Azoomee https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/azoomee
Encore https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/encore-technologies
ACast https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/acast
Devialet https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/devialet
Blendle https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/blendle

Hottest E-commerce/Retail Startup
Deliveroo https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/deliveroo
bloom and wild https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bloom-wild#/entity
Wonderbly
Catawiki https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/catawiki
Eve (Mattress)
Farmdrop

Hottest FinTech Startup
Monzo https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/mondo
Curve https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/curve
YoYo Wallet https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/yoyo
Habito https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/hey-habito
Starling Bank https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/starling-3
Revolut

Hottest Games Startup
Supercell http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/supercell
Small Giant Games https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/small-giant-games
Seriously.com https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/seriously
DOJO Madness https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/dojo-madness#/entity
Bossa Studios https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bossa-studios
Space Ape Games https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-ape

Hottest Startup Accelerator
Entrepreneur First https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/entrepreneur-first
CyLon (Cyber London) https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/cylon#
Startup Bootcamp https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/startupbootcamp
Techstars London https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/techstars
Founders Factory https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/founders-factory-2#
IOT Tribe https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/iot-tribe#section-overview

Hottest Marketing/AdTech Startup
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Tictail https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/tictail#/entity
Seenit https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/seenit#section-overview
Realeyes https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/realeyes

Hottest Education Startup
Peergrade https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/peergrade
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CENTURY Tech https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/century-tech-2
ZZish https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/zzish
Aula Education https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/aulaeducation

Hottest Mobile Startup
Happn https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/happn
Wire https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/wire
Huggle https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/huggle
Depop https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/depop
Fatmap

Hottest Enterprise, SaaS or B2B Startup
Signal Media https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/signal-media-ltd#/entity
Kalo https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/lystable#/entity
talent.io https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/talent-io
deepstreamHub https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/deepstreamhub-2
Charlie HR https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/charliehr
UiPath https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uipath

Hottest Hardware Startup
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Lilium https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/lilium-aviation#/entity
Ultrahaptics https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ultrahaptics
Ava https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ava-3

Hottest Platform Economy / Marketplace
DRIVY https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/voiturelib#/entity
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Glovo App https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/glovo-app#/entity
LoveCrafts https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/lovecrafts#/entity
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Hottest Health Startup
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Lantum https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/network-locum
Tictrac https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/tictrac#section-overview
Touch Surgery https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/toughsurgery

Hottest Cyber Security Startup
Argus Cyber https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/argus-cyber-security
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PixelPin https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pixelpin#/entity
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Hottest Travel & Mobility Startup
Daytrip http://www.ondaytrip.com http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/daytrip
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Hottest Internet of Things Startup
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Withings http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/withings
Pycom https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pycom-ltd#/entity
Puick

Hottest Technology Innovation
Bragi (The Dash) https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bragi
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Hottest Tech For Good
OLIO https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/olio#/entity
BuffaloGrid https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/buffalogrid
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Black Swan Data https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/black-swan-data
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Benovolent AI

Fastest Rising Startup Of The Year
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Asperitas www.crunchbase.com/organization/asperitas
Metalectrique https://www.metalectrique.com/

Hottest Startup Founders
Jutta Steiner, Polkadot
Sriram Subramanian, Tom Carter, Ultrahaptics
Joel Gibbard + Samantha Payne, Open Bionics
Sean Murray, Hello Games
Anna Alex + Julia Bosch, Outfittery
Jasmine Anteunis Co-founder, Recast.ai

Hottest CEO of the Year
Nicole Eagan, Darktrace
Taavet Hinrinkus and Kristo Käärmann CEOs & Co-founders, TransferWise
Demis Hassabis, CEO & Founder, DeepMind
John Earner, CEO, Space Ape Games
Pieter van der Does, Adyen
Ismail Ahmed, World Remit

Best Angel/Seed Investor of the Year
Scott Sage https://angel.co/scott-sage
Reshma Sohoni and Carlos Eduardo Espinal, Seedcamp
Nic Brisbourne, Forward Partners
Taavet Hinrikus
Sarah Turner https://angel.co/sarah-turner
Simon Murdoch https://www.crunchbase.com/person/simon-murdoch

Hottest VC Investor of the Year
Pär-Jörgen Pärson, Northzone
Christian Hernandez, Whitestar Capital https://angel.co/christianhern
Sonali De Ryker, Accel Partners https://www.crunchbase.com/person/sonali-de-rycker
Eileen Burbidge, Passion Capital https://angel.co/eileentso
Robert Moffat, Balderton Capital https://angel.co/robmoff
Saul Klein, LocalGlobe

Hottest Blockchain/Crypto Startup Founder
Jez San, FunFair
Alexander Ivanov, Waves
Julien Bouteloup, Flying Carpet
Balazs Deme, Herdius
Mona El Isa, Melonport

Hottest Blockchain Protocol Project
BigchainDB https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bigchaindb#/entity
Aragon https://aragon.one/
Polkadot.io – Berlin – https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/polkadot
Melonport.com – Zug, Switzerland – https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/melonport
Radix https://www.radixdlt.com/

Hottest Blockchain DApp
Ascribe https://www.ascribe.io/
Verisart https://www.verisart.com
Dovu.io https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/dovu#section-overview
Codex Protocol
Flying Carpet

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Lufthansa / Winding Tree ICO
EU / European Blockchain Partnership
EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum
IBM + Deutsche Bank, HSBC, KBC, Natixis, Rabobank, Société Générale and UniCredit
Hyperledger (Linux Foundation)
Billon https://billongroup.com/

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Blueyard Capital https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/blueyard-capital
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Fabric Ventures, https://www.fabric.vc/
Kenetic Capital

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Status
Polkadot
Bancor
Cosmos
Tezos

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Monax https://monax.io/
Bitwala https://www.bitwala.io/
IOTA https://iota.org/
Cashaa https://cashaa.com/

Hottest Blockchain for Good Project
United Nations (UN) Jordan ethereum project
Alice https://alice.si/
ID Box https://www.idbox.io/

Hottest Blockchain Identity Project
Qadre https://www.qad.re/
Trunomi www.trunomi.com
Uniquid http://uniquid.com
Evernym https://www.evernym.com/

The Europas Grand Prix Award
Supercell
Adyen
Unity
Transferwise
Zalando

Security companies Fortinet and Kromtech found seventeen tainted Docker containers that were essentially downloadable images containing programs that had been designed to mine cryptocurrencies. Further investigation found that they had been downloaded 5 million times, suggesting that hackers were able to inject commands into insecure containers to download this code into otherwise healthy web applications. The researchers found the containers on Docker Hub, a repository for user images.

“Of course, we can safely assume that these had not been deployed manually. In fact, the attack seems to be fully automated. Attackers have most probably developed a script to find misconfigured Docker and Kubernetes installations. Docker works as a client/server architecture, meaning the service can be fully managed remotely via the REST API,” wrote researcher David Maciejak.

The containers are now gone, but the hackers may have gotten away with up to $90,000 in cryptocurrency, a small but significant amount for such a hack.

“Today’s growing number of publicly accessible misconfigured orchestration platforms like Kubernetes allows hackers to create a fully automated tool that forces these platforms to mine Monero,” said a writer of a report by Kromtech. “By pushing malicious images to a Docker Hub registry and pulling it from the victim’s system, hackers were able to mine 544.74 Monero, which is equal to $90,000.”

“As with public repositories like GitHub, Docker Hub is there for the service of the community. When dealing with open public repositories and open source code, we recommend that you follow a few best practices including: know the content author, scan images before running and use curated official images in Docker Hub and certified content in Docker Store whenever possible,” wrote Docker’s head of security David Lawrence in a Threatpost report.

Interestingly, of late hackers have moved from attacking AWS Elastic Compute servers on Amazon’s platform to Docker and other container-based systems. While there are security systems available to manage Docker and Kubernetes containers, users should remain vigilant and assess their vulnerabilities before hackers get more of an upper hand.

AT&T has sealed the deal to buy Time Warner in a major piece of media and technology consolidation.

The deal — which is $85.4 billion and a total of $108 billion with debt — was first announced in October 2016 and, having passed a court approval earlier this week, it was completed on Thursday.

That’s a long cycle to complete a transaction, but this is a complicated one that sees AT&T take control of Time Warner, as well as HBO, Warner Brother’s film studio and its Turner channels. That’s likely to create a complicated web of conflicts, as both media distribution and content creation come together under the same parent.

“The content and creative talent at Warner Bros., HBO and Turner are first-rate. Combine all that with AT&T’s strengths in direct-to-consumer distribution, and we offer customers a differentiated, high-quality, mobile-first entertainment experience,” Randall Stephenson, chairman and CEO of AT&T, said in a statement. “We’re going to bring a fresh approach to how the media and entertainment industry works for consumers, content creators, distributors and advertisers.”

The deal is vital for AT&T. The firm said it expects to save $2.5 billion in “synergies” and return to significant revenue growth within four years. For a snapshot, AT&T’s new look business — which will include Time Warner and Turner — generated some $31 billion last year alone.

This week’s court decision followed a government antitrust suit to block the deal on the grounds that the vertical merger — a term for when companies that provide different or complementary offerings join forces — could harm consumers, particularly on price. The deal was dubbed the antitrust case of the decade, and it was the first time a court has adjudicated over a vertical merger since cell phones were invented, and thus changed the media and distribution landscape.

Now done, AT&T-Time Warner has opened the gate for other mega media deals. This week, Comcast launched a $65 billion bid for Fox, setting up a battle with Disney which bid $52.4 billion in December.

Disclosure: TechCrunch is owned by Oath, a digital media subsidiary of Verizon which competes with Comcast and AT&T.

Didi Chuxing, China’s dominant ride-hailing company, is continuing its international expansion after it announced plans to launch in Australia this month.

The company — which bought Uber’s China business in 2016 — said it will begin serving customers in Melbourne from June 25 following a month-long trial period in Geelong, a neighboring city that’s 75km away. The business will be run by a Didi subsidiary in Australia and it plans to offer “a series of welcome packages to both drivers and riders” — aka discounts and promotions, no doubt. It began signing up drivers on June 1, the company added.

The Australia launch will again put Didi in direct competition with Uber, but that is becoming increasingly common, and also Ola which counts Didi as an investor — more on that below. This move follows forays into Taiwan, Mexico and Brazil this year as Didi has finally expanded beyond its China-based empire.

Didi raised $4 billion in December to develop AI, general technology and to fund international expansion and it has taken a variety of routes to doing the latter. This Australia launch is organic, with Didi developing its own team, while in Taiwan it has used a franchise model and it went into Brazil via acquisition, snapping up local Uber-rival 99 at a valuation of $1 billion.

It is also set to enter Japan where it has teamed up with investor SoftBank on a joint-venture.

“In 2018, Didi will continue to cultivate markets in Latin America, Australia and Japan. We are confident a combination of world-class transportation AI technology and deep local expertise will bring a better experience to overseas markets,” the company added in a statement.

This international expansion has also brought a new level of confusion since Didi has cultivated relationships with other ride-hailing companies across the world while also expanding its own presence internationally.

The Uber deal brought with it a stock swap — turning Didi and Uber from competitors into stakeholders — and the Chinese company has also backed Grab in Southeast Asia, Lyft in the U.S., Ola in India, Careem in the Middle East and — most recently — Taxify, which covers Europe and Africa.

In the case of Australia, Didi will come up against both Uber and Ola, with the India firm currently present in Melbourne, Perth and Sydney via an expansion made earlier this year. Uber vs Didi is to be expected — that’s a complicated relationship — but in taking on Ola (so soon after it came to Australia), Didi is competing directly with a company that it funded via an investment deal for the first time.

That might be a small insight into Didi’s relationship with Ola. Unlike Grab, which has seen Didi follow-on its investments, the Chinese firm sat out Ola’s most recent fundraising last year despite making an investment in the company back in 2015.

“The ride-hailing industry is still a young business, and the potential for growth is substantial. Competition exists in ride-hailing, like in any flourishing industry. But it leads to better products and services, which ultimately benefits users,” Didi told TechCrunch in a statement when asked about its new rivalry with Ola.

Ola declined to comment.

The move into Australia comes at a time when Didi is under intense pressure following the death of a passenger uses its ‘Hitch’ service last month.

The company suspended the Hitch service — which allows groups people who are headed in the same direction together — and removed a number of features while limiting its operations to day-time only. This week, it said it would resume night-time rides but only for drivers picking up passengers of the same sex.