Year: 2018

One of the more interesting applications of AI to the world of advertising and marketing has been in how it’s being used to help measure and ultimately shape campaigns. Now, a company providing the technology to do that has raised a round both to expand its business in adtech as well as to tackle new applications in healthcare and education.

Realeyes, a London-based startup that uses computer vision to read a person’s emotional responses when they are watching a video as short as six seconds long, and then using predictive analytics to help map that reading to the video to provide feedback on its effectiveness, has raised $16.2 million in funding, money that it plans to use to expand in engineering and business development.

The rise of “smart” and connected hardware that picks up data as much as produces it is the opportunity that Realeyes is tapping. “We are surrounded by devices with cameras and microphones in them,” CEO and founder Mihkel Jäätma said in an interview.

The Series A round comes after a strong run of growth at the company. It says that revenues have shot up 932 percent in the last four years, and it has added customers like Coca Cola, Mars, Publicis, Turner and Oath (which also owns TechCrunch) to its books.

Realeyes is not wasting time in bringing on extra talent to support the expansion. Barry Coleman, formerly at LootCrate, is coming on as COO. And Maja Pantic, a professor of affective and behavioural computing at Imperial College London who had been on the Realeyes Advisory Board, is getting “a more hands-on role.” Both will report to Jäätma, who started the company while still a student at Oxford.

The round was led by Draper Esprit, with participation also from Karma Ventures and Harbert European Growth Capital.

Draper Esprit recently had a big win in the area of marketing tech with another UK startup in its portfolio, when Oracle acquired Grapeshot for what one reliable source said was up to $400 million including earn-outs; Grapeshot had only raised $22 million in total.

Karma, meanwhile, is another notable investor: formed by the founding engineers behind Skype, the group announced a €70 million fund earlier this month focused on “deep tech”, and this is one of the first investments to come out of that fund. (And in addition to the affinity for what Realeyes is doing, there is another connection: those early Skype engineers are Estonian, and Realeyes’ Jäätma also hails from there.)

There have been a number of notable startups using advances in computer vision and big data analytics to gather more information about how people are responding to ad campaigns.

Two of the more notable of the group have recently made shifts. Affectiva started with ad tech but now has expanded into automotive (and coincidentally its former head of sales joined Realeyes two weeks ago). And Emotient also started with ads but then was acquired by Apple. But there are plenty of others. They include startups like Kairos and SightCorp, as well as heavyweights like Microsoft, which offers its own API for detecting the emotions of people watching your content.

Jäätma said that Realeyes stands apart from the pack for a few reasons. The first is the size of the company’s database. “We have hand-labelled over 15 million frames of naturally-occurring emotions, with up to seven human assessments for each frame over the last decade,” he said.

The second is what the company does with that data, specifically in relation to video. “Commercially, we have invested more in the full platform around the core measurement technology,” he said, which includes predictive analytics that even provide data on how users’ responses to videos will impact sales of the item being advertised. “Marketers can actually use emotional intelligence to drive business outcomes.”

“Realeyes is changing the way marketers can measure impact through their cutting-edge technology. Artificial Intelligence will continue to change the way we understand each other – even our emotions,” said Stuart Chapman, COO at Draper Esprit, in a statement. “Realeyes is well positioned to fundamentally change the way the advertising industry can be more engaging to its audiences.”

“Driving business outcomes” is also very important right now because there has been a lot of scrutiny over how users are tracked around the web, this could give brands, agencies, media platforms and others a key way to gleaning effectiveness without having to do get too invasive.

(And to be completely clear, Jäätma said that Realeyes’ technology is applied on small pools of users, and only by way of opted-in panels. In other words, this is not tech that will suddenly start recording your responses to online ads you might come across in your daily web browsing.)

And the fact that Realeyes is able to draw conclusions from even short video clips is also interesting: it plays into the fact that a lot of video ads today are a turn-off if they last too long, and so marketers are looking for shorter and more engaging formats to offset that issue.

Notably, the company currently is not working with Google’s YouTube, but it has been running tests with other video players, a pilot with Virool, to see how opt-in campaigns on high-traffic sites might work. (You could, for example, imagine something like this being used in a consumer survey campaign format, which could also potentially position Google as a competitor to Realeyes, too.)

While a lot of Realeyes’ focus will continue on the marketing and advertising world, it’s also starting to look at other areas — specifically health tech — specifically looking at how to help detect depression — and education, here specifically looking at ways of improving how students stay engaged with digital learning content.

Even with a squarely opt-in model behind what Realeyes does now, there are, of course, still challenges that the company will need to overcome.

For example, one big story in the news in recent weeks has been about resignations of employees at Google who were unhappy with how the company would potentially start working on AI projects with government groups. Even if Realeyes is largely still in the domain of deep tech — more than half of its employees are engineers and working in R&D — and figuring out new ways of gleaning psychological information from small fragments of video and facial responses, there is will always be a question mark for any new tech company about how it would feel about how this might work across any and all applications.

“It’s a great question but it hasn’t come up with us yet,” Jäätma said. “We’re not having such conversations and use cases. We’re still a 65-person company and that is an important enough discussion that we would take a [collective] point of view, but we haven’t had to yet. The smartest people in science are also pondering those things and don’t have the final answers.”

Meet Maze, a startup building a user interface testing tool for your app prototypes. Maze is a simple web-based service that lets you turn InVision and Marvel files into UX tests.

While most designers work with InVision and Marvel, it’s hard to turn those designs into a quantitative test. Maze isn’t a video recording tool and doesn’t require you to watch video footage.

It isn’t a new prototyping tool either as the startup wants you to keep using InVision and Marvel. Maze can record a user path from a web browser on desktop or mobile without having to install anything.

After setting up your test, you can share a link with a bunch of users. When you open this link, you get clear instructions telling you what you’re supposed to do (“find the nearest Lebanese restaurant” or “add John as friend” for instance). After each test, Maze automatically shows you the next one so you can keep going.

Developers then get a dashboard with a clear overview of the different tests. You can see the success rate, the time it takes to do something and the screen areas that get a lot of taps. You can also look at individual tests.

You can use Maze for simple A/B tests by sending two different designs to different groups and comparing the results.

Thousands of designers have tried the service so far, including people working for Amazon, Airbnb, Uber and Shopify.

The company has raised a $470,000 pre-seed round with Partech and Seedcamp (£350,000). Maze uses a software-as-a-service approach with a limited free plan and multiple paid subscriptions.

I played with the product for a few minutes and it’s a polished experience. You wouldn’t expect that from such a young startup. While I’m not a designer, I think many designers are probably going to use it regularly.

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VivaTech is starting in a couple of days, which means TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield Europe is also starting on Thursday. So let me introduce you to the last batch of judges that will come to Paris for the event.

If you haven’t been to TechCrunch Disrupt, the Startup Battlefield  is arguably the most interesting part of the show. Before everybody started doing a startup competition, there was the Startup Battlefield. Companies like Dropbox, Fitbit, N26 and Yammer all launched on the TechCrunch stage.

And we’re bringing talented investors and founders to judge the startups. Here’s the third round of judges (see part 1, part 2 and part 3).

Roxanne Varza, Director, Station F

Roxanne Varza is the Director of Station F, which is the largest startup campus worldwide, backed by Xavier Niel. She is also involved in the European Commission's European Innovation Council (EIC) and is on the board of Agence France Presse (AFP).

Prior to her current role, Roxanne was the lead for Microsoft’s start-up activities in France, running both Bizspark and Microsoft Ventures programs for 3 years. She was also Editor of TechCrunch France from 2010-2011 and has written for several publications including Business Insider and The Telegraph.

In April 2013, Business Insider listed her as one of the top 30 women under 30 in tech. She has also been listed in additional rankings by Business Insider, Vanity Fair and Le Figaro, The Evening Standard and more.

Roxanne also co-founded StartHer (ex Girls in Tech Paris) and is the co-organizer of the Failcon Paris conference. More recently, she co-founded Tech.eu, a European tech media backed by Dave McClure, Adeo Ressi, Daniel Waterhouse and more.

Prior to TechCrunch, Roxanne worked for the French government’s foreign direct investment agency helping fast-growing startups develop their activities in France. Roxanne has spoken, moderated, mentored and judged numerous startup events and programs throughout Europe and also helps European startups with content and communications.

Roxanne is trilingual and holds degrees from UCLA, Sciences Po Paris and the London School of Economics. She is also an epilepsy advocate.

Keld van Schreven, Co-Founder, KR1

Keld is co-founder of KR1, UK’s leading crypto investment public company. First investors in Melonport, Funfair, Rocketpool and Etherisc. Keld is advisor to IXLedger and previously co-founder of several web startups since 1995.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Brent Hoberman, Co-Founder, firstminute capital

Brent Hoberman is chairman and co-founder of Founders Factory, an ambitious corporate backed incubator/accelerator based in London, and also of Founders Forum, a series of intimate annual global events for the leading entrepreneurs of today and the rising stars of tomorrow. Brent is a co-founder and was founding chairman of Smartup, Grip & made.com, a leading European direct-from-factory consumer homewares retailer. Most recently, Brent co-founded firstminute capital, a London-based pan-European seed fund, backed by some of the world's top entrepreneurs. Brent co-founded lastminute.comin April 1998, was CEO from its inception and sold it in 2005 to Sabre for $1.1bn. Technology businesses he has co-founded have raised over $500m.

Brent sits on the Advisory board for LetterOne Technology (a $16bn investment fund), the Oxford Foundry and the UK Government Digital Advisory Board. He is a board member of The Economist, a YGL and one of the Prime Minister's Business Trade Ambassadors. Brent was awarded a CBE for services to entrepreneurship in the 2015 New Year's Honour's List.

Yann de Vries, Partner, Atomico

Yann is a Partner at Atomico, based in London, where he works on the sourcing, evaluation, negotiation and due diligence of new investment opportunities.

Yann focuses on technology in advertising, logistics and transportation, and healthcare, and works with several Atomico portfolio companies including Jobandtalent, Teralytics, GoEuro and Lilium.

Yann joined Atomico from Redpoint e.ventures (RPeV), one of Brazil’s leading venture capital funds in Brazil, where he was a Managing Director and co-founder, leading investments in Farfetch and Gympass. Prior to starting RPeV, he was the head of corporate development for Cisco in EMEA and Latin America, and spent five years in Silicon Valley working in a start-up and venture capital. Yann began his career in engineering and operating roles at large tech companies across Europe and emerging markets, including Hong Kong and Egypt.

Yann holds an MSEE from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Yann is fluent in English and French, and proficient in German and Portuguese.

Sonali De Rycker, Partner, Accel

Sonali De Rycker focuses on consumer, software and financial services businesses.

She led Accel’s investments in Avito (acquired by Naspers), Lyst, Spotify, Wallapop, KupiVIP, Calastone, Catawiki, JobToday, Wonga, Shift Technology and SilverRail. She is also an independent director of Match Group (public). Prior to Accel, Sonali was with Atlas Ventures.

Sonali grew up in Mumbai and graduated from Bryn Mawr College and Harvard Business School.

Matthew Panzarino, Editor-In-Chief, TechCrunch

Matthew Panzarino has been a retail jockey, founded a professional photography business and a news blog covering the Apple ecosystem. He has served as News Editor and Managing Editor at The Next Web and is now Editor-In-Chief at TechCrunch.

He has made a name for himself in the tech media world as a writer and editor, relentlessly covering Apple and Twitter, in addition to a broad range of startups in the fields of robotics, computer vision, AI, fashion, VR, AR and more.

The United States and China are said to be working on a deal that would keep ZTE from going out of business. According to the Wall Street Journal, the two countries have agreed on a “broad outline” of a deal to settle a trade dispute sparked when the Commerce Department banned American companies from selling to ZTE for seven years after it violated sanctions against Iran and North Korea.

If the deal goes through, the U.S. would lift the ban. In return, ZTE would have to make major leadership changes and also potentially face heavy fines. The deal would enable its business to survive, however, since many of its most important suppliers, including Qualcomm, are American and the ban has the potential to cause irreversible damage to its business. ZTE is also the fourth-largest vendor of mobile phones in the U.S.

As part of the deal, China reportedly offered to remove tariffs that impact billions of dollars in U.S. farm products, though one of the WSJ’s sources said “the White House was meticulous in affirming that the case is a law enforcement matter and not a bargaining chip in negotiations.”

Talk of the deal isn’t a complete surprise. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump tweeted that “President Xi of China, and I, are working together to give massive Chinese phone company, ZTE, a way to get back into business, fast.” He was met with backlash from officials and lawmakers concerned that the administration is softening its stance in trade negotiations with China. The Chinese government had reportedly demanded that the U.S. roll back sanctions against ZTE as a prerequisite for continuing trade talks, which stalled last month (though the countries agreed yesterday to continue).

President Xi of China, and I, are working together to give massive Chinese phone company, ZTE, a way to get back into business, fast. Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 13, 2018

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told CNBC yesterday that ZTE is “not going to get off scot-free” and that it still faces fines, “very severe compliance measures, a new board of directors, a new management team.”

A couple of gaming hardware announcements just dropped from team Razer. What makes the Core X graphics enclosure arguably the most notable of the bunch is the inclusion of a standard Thunderbolt 3 connection on the rear of the device.

In addition to Razer’s own systems and Windows 10 PCs, the new enclosure is compatible with Apple products running macOS High Sierra 10.13.4. That’s part of a whole new focus on gaming for Apple’s devices, unveiled back at WWDC roughly this time last year, along with the promise of VR development support.

In late March, external GPU support officially arrived for High Sierra 10.13.4, and now Razer’s ready to get on-board. The Core X is designed to hold up to three desktop graphics cards and can charge a connected laptop through the aforementioned Thunrderbolt 3 connection.

The enclosure is available now for $299. Along with the X, Razer’s Core V2 is now also compatible with Macs via Thunderbolt 3. That one will run you $499. Good new all around for Mac users ready to get serious about gaming.

Also new today is the Razer Blade 15.6-inch, an ultra thin gaming notebook the company has taken to calling “the world’s smallest…in its class.” The 15.6-inch display comes 1920 x 1080, standard, which users can upgrade to 4k. All of that is surrounded by some skinny 4.9mm bezels.

Inside is an 8th gen Core i7 processor, coupled with either a either GeForce GTX 1060 or GeForce GTX 1070  graphics. There’s also up to 16GB of memory and up to 512GB of storage inside, loaded with what Razer says is $420 of games and software. The system features a 16.8 million color keyboard and output for up to three external displays.

The new system starts at $1,899.

A former Uber software engineer filed a lawsuit against the company today in the Superior Court of California, accusing it of retaliating against her for after she reported sexual harassment and discrimination.

The complaint by Ingrid Avendaño, who worked at Uber from 2014 to 2017, alleges that Uber’s workplace “was permeated with degrading, marginalizing, discriminatory and sexually harassing conduct toward women.” Avendaño’s account and her claim that “this culture was perpetuated and condoned by numerous managers, including high level company leaders” is similar to the description of Uber’s internal culture presented by Susan Fowler, also a former Uber engineer, in her pivotal February 2017 blog post. Fowler’s account led to an internal investigation, multiple firings and, along with other company scandals, contributed to the resignation of CEO Travis Kalanick.

Avendaño’s complaint (“Ingrid Avendaño v. Uber Technologies, Inc.,” Case No. CGC-18-566677 in the Superior Court of California, San Francisco County) claims that when she tried to report misconduct, she faced “blatant retaliation, including denial of promotions and raises, unwarranted negative performance reviews and placement on an oppressively demanding on-call schedule that had detrimental effects on her health. She was also threatened with termination.” Avendaño eventually resigned from Uber, the lawsuit says.

Avendaño is represented by Outten & Golden, a law firm that specializes in employee rights. Last October, Avendaño and two other Latina software engineers were the named plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against Uber for allegedly discriminating against women and people of color. But Avendaño later opted out of the collective action and, according to Outten & Golden, did not participate when Uber agreed to a settlement in March 2018. The lawsuit filed by Avendaño today is separate from that settlement.

Streaming video services invest heavily in technology to improve their ability to show users a set of personalized recommendations about what to what next. But according to a new research study released today by UserTesting, it seems that consumers aren’t watching much recommended content – in fact, only 29 percent of the study’s participants said they actually watched something the service recommended.

On some services, those figures were extremely low – for example, only 6 percent of HBO NOW users said they watched recommended content.

That’s probably because consumers found it difficult to locate HBO NOW’s recommendations in the first place. The service was given a low 16.8 “customer experience” score on this front, the study says. That’s a much lower score than all other services analyzed, including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and YouTube TV – all of which had scores in the 80’s. (See first chart, below).

To be fair, HBO NOW doesn’t really do recommendations in the same way as the others.

Its app offers a “Featured” selection of content for all users, and, if you scroll down further, there are a couple of editorial collections, like “Essential HBO” or “14 Hidden Gems You Missed the First Time.” A separate “Collections” section includes more of these suggestions, like “New Movies,” “Just Added,” “Last Chance” and others.

The lack of personalized, easily located recommendations also impacted HBO NOW’s overall score in the UserTesting study, which rated the services across a variety of metrics including availability of content, friction-free viewing, ease of scrubbing and episode scanning, and other factors. HBO NOW was also was dinged by survey respondents for lagging, freezing and buffering issues, though they said they appreciated its clean design.

Netflix’s overall score was 89.5, making it the highest-rated streaming service among those analyzed due to having the most relevant recommendations, overall high ease-of-use, and a speedy service. It was followed by Hulu (86.8), Amazon Prime (85), YouTube TV (80.7), and then HBO NOW (71.8).

Coincidentally, Netflix also just beat HBO in a survey related to consumer appreciation for original programming, put out by Morgan Stanley. 39 percent of respondents in that survey said Netflix had the “best original programming” compared with HBO’s second place rank of 14 percent.

UserTesting’s study also backed up earlier research from Deloitte, as it found that subscription video customers are having to subscribe to more than one service in order to find all the content they want to watch.

More than half said they subscribe to at least two apps. For example, 90 percent of HBO NOW customers also subscribed to Netflix, while 80 percent subscribed to Amazon Prime.

The study additionally found that much of viewing (45%) takes place on TV or via streaming media devices like Roku, Apple TV, or Amazon Fire TV. 37 percent preferred laptops, and 11 percent said their smartphone or tablet was their primary streaming device. For some services, TV viewing is even higher – Hulu recently said that the majority – 78 percent – takes place on TVs.

UserTesting’s study involved 500 subscription video customers, 74 percent of whom said they watched streaming media every day. The full report is available here.

 

 

Amazon is launching new app store with tools created specifically to help its sellers manage their inventory and orders. Called the Marketplace Appstore, it will feature apps made using Amazon Marketplace Web Service (Amazon MWS) by Amazon and third-party developers screened by the company. According to a report by CNET, the Marketplace Appstore launches to sellers today.

There are now about two million sellers on Amazon, including more than a million small to medium-sized businesses in the United States. Amazon MWS is an integrated web service API that allows sellers to share data about their inventory, orders and logistics with Amazon in order to automate more tasks. It also enables sellers to build apps for their own accounts and other sellers.

The company told CNET that “many developers have innovated and created applications that complement our tools and integrate with our services. We created the Marketplace Appstore to help businesses more easily discover these applications, streamline their business operations and ultimately create a better experience for our customers.”

The Marketplace Appstore is free for developers to join and use, but they are currently required to submit an application to Amazon and undergo a business and practices review.

Comcast today is officially launching its own Wi-Fi extender devices called xFi Pods that help to address problems with weak Wi-Fi signals in parts of a customer’s home due to things like the use of building materials that disrupt signals, or even just the home’s design. The launch follows Comcast’s announcement last year that it was investing in the mesh router maker Plume, which offers plug-in “pods” that help extend Wi-Fi signals.

The company said that it would launch its own xFi pods that pair with Comcast’s gateways to its own customers as a result of that deal.

Those pods were initially available in select markets, including Boston, Chicago and Denver, ahead of today’s nationwide launch.

The pods themselves are hexagon-shopped devices that plug in to any electrical outlet in the home, and then pair with Comcast’s xFi Wireless Gateway or the xFi Advanced Gateway to help Wi-Fi signals extend to the hard-to-reach areas of the home.

The pods work with the Comcast Gateways to continuously monitor and optimize the Wi-Fi connections, Comcast explains, while its cloud-based management service evaluates the home’s Wi-Fi environment to make sure all the connected devices are using the best signal bands and Wi-Fi channels. Plus, the devices are smart enough to self-monitor their own performance, diagnose issues and “heal” themselves, as needed, says Comcast.

However, early reviews of Plume’s pods were mixed. CNET said the system was slow and the pods were too expensive, for example. But Engadget found the system had the lowest latency, compared with competitors, and helped devices roam more easily and accurately.

Comcast has addressed some of the earlier complaints. The pods are now much more affordable, for starters. While they’ve been selling on the Plume website for $329 for a six-pack, Comcast’s six-pack is $199. A three-pack is also available for $119, instead of the $179 when bought directly from Plume.

More importantly, perhaps, is that Comcast’s system is different from the pods featured in earlier reviews.

While Plume technology is a component of the new pods, they are not Plume devices, Comcast tells TechCrunch. Instead, Comcast licensed the Plume technology, then reconfigured some aspects of it in order to integrate xFi. It also designed its own pods in-house.

In addition, Comcast’s engineers developed new firmware and new software in-house to make it easy to pair the pods with a Comcast Gateway.

The Comcast xFi pods can be bought from its own website, the xFi app and in some Xfinity retail stores.

The xFi app (for iOS and Android) is also how customers can manage and view the connection status of the pods.

Comcast says it will make buying pods even easier later this year by offering a monthly payment plan.

The company has been upgrading its Wi-Fi offering in recent months as a means of staying competitive. Last year it launched the Xfinity xFi platform to help customers better manage their home Wi-Fi network with features like device monitoring, troubleshooting, “bedtime” schedules for families, internet pause and other parental controls.

Comcast declined to say how many pods were sold in its first trial markets, only that the response so far has been positive and boosted the company’s Net Promoter Score as a result.

Image credits: Comcast

Epic Games doesn’t want the party to stop.

The gaming company announced today that it plans to funnel $100 million into Fortnite eSports competitions for the “2018-2019 season,” a move which will undoubtedly drive talent and enthusiasm to the battle royale title.

The company announced the investment in a short blog post:

In the 2018 – 2019 season, Epic Games will provide $100,000,000 to fund prize pools for Fortnite competitions. We’re getting behind competitive play in a big way, but our approach will be different – we plan to be more inclusive, and focused on the joy of playing and watching the game.

Fortnite has had an explosive period of growth over the past several months since the release of its battle royale flavor following the popularity of PUBG, but Epic Games seems to be doubling down on ensuring the continued popularity of the recent multiplayer gameplay trend.

Unlike a lot of popular eSports titles, Fortnite is available across a pretty wide variety of platforms beyond just the PC, with console and mobile flavors also available. Epic hasn’t released much in the way of usage numbers lately, but the game hit 2 million concurrent players in January and it has undoubtedly surged in popularity since then.

Whether the young title can continue to draw attention and crowds in the face of fresher talent  moving forward will depend heavily on streamers and eSports leagues continuing to show interest, but $100 million in investment in prize pools will almost certainly prove to be quite helpful.